Journalism and sexism in the games industry

[Blarghagh]

Dude, we're in the middle of a consumer boycott. Of course we're not going to give it more traffic. There is no way that after months of #GamerGate and several discussion regarding archived links that you participated in that you do not know that. Which is, I think, why you choose a link to do your arguing for you - so you could judge us for not reading someone else's opinions rather than actually have to defend opinions as your own. You could have given your own actual opinions (considering we're speaking with you, not with Polygon) or even archived the link, it's easy. No reason not to have done so, other than perhaps staggering ignorance that's even out of your league.

 

This is exactly why people think you're arguing in bad faith. Either you are extremely manipulative, or you just come off that way constantly because of... coincidence?

[BruceVC]

Dude, we're in the middle of a consumer boycott. Of course we're not going to give it more traffic. There is no way that after months of #GamerGate and several discussion regarding archived links that you participated in that you do not know that. Which is, I think, why you choose a link to do your arguing for you - so you could judge us for not reading someone else's opinions rather than actually have to defend opinions as your own. You could have given your own actual opinions (considering we're speaking with you, not with Polygon) or even archived the link, it's easy. No reason not to have done so, other than perhaps staggering ignorance that's even out of your league.

 

This is exactly why people think you're arguing in bad faith. Either you are extremely manipulative, or you just come off that way constantly because of... coincidence?

 

I would really advise you guys stop using these strange justifications to avoid having a debate in a meaningful way, its looks really bad from an outsiders perspective

 

You can easily make an exception to your "GG boycott " and read the link I posted , its not like your avoiding of Polygon has made any difference to them being in business so it should make no difference to reference this information quickly. But I refuse to do the work for you and post even an archive link , if you care about this debate then you need to read the link yourself. Thats what everyone else does 

 

I also  did try to explain the article, in essence the writer says that hookers are already victims in RL due to their lifestyle choice and its unnecessarily cruel to have them in the game and to be killable. So he suggests removing them, but no one seemed to understand that point. Now  I realize why, I don't think many people read it because its on Polygon. But you need to read it to understand the point as its more complex than what I mentioned and the truth is I  can't get the message across as effectively as the article does 

 

So read the article !!!!  

[TrashMan]

 

I would really advise you guys stop using these strange justifications to avoid having a debate in a meaningful way, its looks really bad from an outsiders perspective

 

You can easily make an exception to your "GG boycott " and read the link I posted , its not like your avoiding of Polygon has made any difference to them being in business so it should make no difference to reference this information quickly. But I refuse to do the work for you and post even an archive link , if you care about this debate then you need to read the link yourself. Thats what everyone else does 

 

I also  did try to explain the article, in essence the writer says that hookers are already victims in RL due to their lifestyle choice and its unnecessarily cruel to have them in the game and to be killable. So he suggests removing them, but no one seemed to understand that point. Now  I realize why, I don't think many people read it because its on Polygon. But you need to read it to understand the point as its more complex than what I mentioned and the truth is I  can't get the message across as effectively as the article does 

 

So read the article !!!!  

 

 

Nope.

 

You KNOW were boycotting and you don't want to provide an archive link an then attacks us for not reading it?

Bruce, you're so full of s**** I'm surprised it's not spraying out of your mouth like in some horror movie.

 

Let me make this is clear and concise as possible.

That articles reasoning? Garbage

Your reasoning? Garbage.

Removing hookers from games will accomplish exactly WHAT? How does that help real sex workers in any way, shape or form?

Unnecessarily cruel? The only thing that's unnecessarily cruel is having to open this tread as see your posts.

[Blarghagh]

How much use is a boycott if people just easily make exceptions? "Strange justifications" my behind. The consumer boycott is the very core of what we're doing here.

[Nonek]

 

Oh I forgot, you don't read certain websites because they don't follow the " GG code of etiquette "

 

Ironic that, you are all about freedom of information but you actively practice censorship....and you expect me to tell you what that article says...no I don't think so.

 

If you want to engage in a mature informed debate then you should learn to read all sources of information. Just because you personally don't agree with a website there is no reason it can't provide an interesting perspective. You have now effectively " cut your nose off to spite your face " . Thats sad, I'm glad I don't automatically  refuse to recognize certain websites ...whats next? Maybe you can burn some books you don't like ?

 

 

As far as the sex industry is concerned thats not one of the SJ campaigns I am actively involved in. I can't be involved in all SJ movements Nonek so I focus on issues I can impact. And as I have said twice the solution is to legalize sex work and protect the girls rights. Thats the best we can hope for because you will never make it go away. So I'm not sure what more you really expect me to say?  

 

And finally we generally don't use the word " whore" ...it is in fact demeaning . Its obvious who has the less respect for their lifestyle ...try to refer to hookers in a less insulting manner

 

 

Try not to be so simple minded Bruce, a consumer boycott is not the same thing as censorship, a child could tell tell you the difference and that consumers advocating their rights is a blow for freedom of speech not against it, really that's a staggeringly idiotic view Bruce, try and do better. It certainly doesn't align with the censorship that only one side, yours, has practised in their effort to quash consumer voices, and of course uphold their right to remain corrupt and unethical as you have stated you wish them to remain as well. The book burning theatric is just petty and childish, refrain from such behaviour in future, for your own sake.

 

If you cannot make the argument on your own, and need to parrot the words of various professional shills then that is equally damning, as it paints you as a simple minded follower clinging to fashionable platitudes instead of your own researched beliefs. If your arguments is so pathetically simple as sex workers are victims in real life and so virtual prostitutes should be removed from GTA V, then your argument is childishly simplistic, why should one group of victims be whitewashed from the game, what of all the other victims and why do you place special emphasis on sex workers?

 

If you care so much for real life whores, then instead of trying to remove virtual ones from GTA V, instead stop using sex workers and forcing yourself upon them for money. Your actions only add to their misery, and propagate an evil and exploitative industry that anybody caring about womens rights would not use in the first place. There's no social justice in your buying of these poor womens bodies, and the humiliating acts they are forced to carry out to sate your whims.

 

I agree that whore is a rather perjorative term, though you'd know better than me with your experience of buying them, and you should not have labelled Volourn's niece as such, it was nasty and small minded.

Edited January 10, 2015 by Nonek

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Zor had some words of wisdom I think we should all take to heart.

 

Just don't respond to Bruce. What do you expect to gain? You won't convince him if he has any good faith- his pattern of behaviour shows that conclusively- and the largest probability by far is that he's just plain trolling. In a sadly unentertaining manner. Just ignore him, and if you can't do that Ignore him.

I remember seeing a stream early in gamergate where several pro-consumers spent about 2 hours arguing with a troll. At the end, the troll said he didn't think gamergate would go anywhere because despite knowing he was a troll, they still spent two hours trying to have a reasonable conversation with him. Best not to keep banging your head against a brick wall.

 

Anyways, looks like some leaders are viciously attacking feminist frequency's McIntosh by reposting his tweets. David Draiman is currently hammering at it.

 

Edited January 10, 2015 by KaineParker

[Meshugger]

^Awesome, keep  on hammering.

[Oerwinde]

Not to defend McIntosh, but how is criticising Israel antisemitism?

[Volourn]

"Oh I forgot, you don't read certain websites because they don't follow the " GG code of etiquette "

 

Ironic that, you are all about freedom of information but you actively practice censorship..."

 

Uh.. Your definition of censorship is weird. I guess I censor Bethesda because I don't go to their forums. Your logic is ludicrous.

[Blarghagh]

Yeah, coming from somebody making the point that nobody is really censoring GTA he sure is censoring it by not buying the product.

 

I think I'm going to go back to my earlier stance of not engaging with Bruce about this subject.

[Rostere]

 

 

This is just bizarre. That is not anti-semitism...

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

 

This is just bizarre. That is not anti-semitism...

 

Some Israelis would take it as such, and Intel does employ quite a bit of them.

 

But I'd say there's plenty of crazier **** FullMcIntosh has said that can be(and is) used instead.

 

EDIT: FullMcIntoshtyme

 

 

 

 

Edited January 10, 2015 by KaineParker

[Blarghagh]

 

... it's also no coincidence that control is at the center of being able to move your body and think at all and that video games mirror those options, you dumb bastard.

[Rostere]

Some Israelis would take it as such, and Intel does employ quite a bit of them.

 

Nah, I think the anti-semitism smearing is more of an American thing. In Israel, what he said is pretty much the POV of the far-left. It's only in the US people would come up with the idea to label it "anti-semitism".

[Malcador]

 

... it's also no coincidence that control is at the center of being able to move your body and think at all and that video games mirror those options, you dumb bastard.

Yeah, and bullets are shaped in a phallic way because of reasons other than aerodynamics.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

 

 

... it's also no coincidence that control is at the center of being able to move your body and think at all and that video games mirror those options, you dumb bastard.

Yeah, and bullets are shaped in a phallic way because of reasons other than aerodynamics.

 

Aerodynamics is a tool of the Patriarchy.

[Orogun01]

I'm still waiting for the Intel stock to drop.

[BruceVC]

Yeah, coming from somebody making the point that nobody is really censoring GTA he sure is censoring it by not buying the product.

 

I think I'm going to go back to my earlier stance of not engaging with Bruce about this subject.

 

Oh you must be relieved, you have found a justification to also jump on the " lets ignore BruceVC on this thread bandwagon " 

 

And the reason, well its very serious. He used the word censorship in the wrong context !!!! 

 

I meant to say you are avoiding/boycotting/ignoring certain websites and that means you aren't getting a balanced view of certain topics. Exactly how I cannot explain to you properly  about removing the hookers in GTA, you don't understand my reason and you refuse to read the link which explains the point 

 

But I get thats not really important to most people on this thread, whats more important is a medium so you guys can vent and express outrage. But you aren't really interested in dissenting opinions, which is why you will notice that very few people outside of the normal contributors  are active in this discussion

 

But at least you found a way to ignore my posts, that pesky word " censorship ", well done   

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Games/Interviews/larian_studios_pt1/

 

Old, but pretty good.

 

I saw a curve once from a [big publisher] showing the correlation for an RPG between Metacritic score and sales. There's an incredibly strong relationship, which is exponential. An 80 will get you a couple of hundred thousand sales, say, where a 90 will get you a couple million if it's marketed properly.

 

That's a very scary thing, that one number can have such a huge impact on whether or not a studio is going to be allowed to make its next game... Studios are killed over bad Metacritic scores. That happens every day almost. If you look at what makes up the Metacritic score and how it's done...you wonder how many reviewers or sites are taking it very responsibly.

 

I wish the user ratings would be much more important than the critic ratings, because then if you add up all the critic ratings, what do you have, 100 guys (or girls)? Versus thousands of players. So something is twisted there.

 

And when you see scores being manipulated, that drives you completely bananas as an independent, small developer. Obviously if I was on the other side I would be happy if I could put **** in a box and put a nice name on it and get a 90% score.

Especially relevant IMO.

[kirottu]

Every time someone links to Metacritic I'm reminded of New Vegas and the score of 84 when Obsidian needed 85 to get a bonus.

[Orogun01]

Every time someone links to Metacritic I'm reminded of New Vegas and the score of 84 when Obsidian needed 85 to get a bonus.

I've seen some journalist claim that as one of the reason why the tend to err on the side of the developer. It really is a dumb thing to base bonuses on rather than unit sold or working at an accelerated schedule.

[Fighter]

Why base bonuses on score and not sales success directly?

[Blarghagh]

 

Yeah, coming from somebody making the point that nobody is really censoring GTA he sure is censoring it by not buying the product.

 

I think I'm going to go back to my earlier stance of not engaging with Bruce about this subject.

 

Oh you must be relieved, you have found a justification to also jump on the " lets ignore BruceVC on this thread bandwagon " 

 

And the reason, well its very serious. He used the word censorship in the wrong context !!!! 

 

I meant to say you are avoiding/boycotting/ignoring certain websites and that means you aren't getting a balanced view of certain topics. Exactly how I cannot explain to you properly  about removing the hookers in GTA, you don't understand my reason and you refuse to read the link which explains the point 

 

But I get thats not really important to most people on this thread, whats more important is a medium so you guys can vent and express outrage. But you aren't really interested in dissenting opinions, which is why you will notice that very few people outside of the normal contributors  are active in this discussion

 

But at least you found a way to ignore my posts, that pesky word " censorship ", well done   

 

 

Listen closely, because I am only saying this once. I do not appreciate that implication in there that I am somehow hypocritical because I am now censoring you, so here's some education: If I decide to not respond to you, but leave your posts intact, that is a boycott. If I were to remove your posting ability, which is actually well within my powers, then I would be censoring you. I would never, ever censor your opinions or those of anybody else here - I am only here to enforce forum guidelines, and in fact I am going to be letting other mods handle the occassional beef with you from now on since my extreme frustration with you constitutes a serious conflict of interest - but that doesn't mean I have to take them all seriously.

 

As for jumping on a bandwagon, I believe I started the bandwagon since we had this discussion before. I can find the posts where I resolved not to speak to you on this subject three months back, if you want. I just changed my mind because I felt bad about ignoring you since I believed you were discussing this in good faith. Clearly, that was a mistake. It has nothing to do with your opinions, I can respect some of your opinions. In fact, I'd be the first to admit that most prostitutes are, in fact, victims of society. You don't even know how much you are understating some of that when you claim that legalizing prostitution would solve the problems. It's legalized here, but at most it mitigated some of the problems. A large share of "legal" prostitutes in Amsterdam here are foreign women who were lured here with the promise of a dance career and forced into prostitution by circumstance or threat. Not to say that it isn't a huge improvement, most of them get healthcare and fewer have drug addictions and in fact the lion's share of prostitutes are in there by choice (though whether they like it or not is up to them). You assume I, being a part of "you guys" as if we were a single unit, disagree with you on everything and that simply isn't true.

 

Also, I read that article two threads back when it was first posted as an archived link and in fact the two of us discussed it then. At length. Again, you can literally look back and find the posts. I wasn't even participating in this discussion about prostitutes in GTA this time around since we already had it, literally you and me. In fact, we drove around in circles about it several times. We discussed the idea that adding male prostitutes might be a solution, though that probably would just add gay-bashing to the list of complaints since male prostitutes mostly service men.

 

We argued about how GTA is an exaggerated representation of US street crime and for it to be so prostitution is a neccesity. We bandied back and forth if being a "victim of society" was a worthwhile reason to censor them in art as street gang youths are just as much victims of society and you could say that soldiers are victims of society and their PTSD means that any war game would be insensitive on the same grounds (thinking about it, war games have been shown to help soldiers deal with PTSD and there is a correlation between video game sales rising and crime rates dropping so until we have more information, the logical conclusion would be that censoring any of these could be harmful to society rather than beneficial). You didn't agree with some of the points I made, though you conceded on others yet you are making those same points again now. I am not interested in dissenting opinions? You've literally said "I haven't thought about it that way" on some of the things you said then and yet you're back now with the same points still not having thought about it, instead derailing the thread to make the same points again and again and again.

 

It's not your use of the word censorship. It's the fact that we've explained how you're wrong about what is or isn't censorship a million times in long, drawn out discussions and you simply do not care. It's not any of your opinions that are the problem, it's your debating style, memory span, manipulation and all around acting on bad faith. There is simply nothing to gain from discussing with you. I might as well try arguing with Oby. Do you not see how frustrating you are being that in almost every thread you participate in a lot people eventually decide you are a troll that should be ignored? This thread isn't even the worst one, as it's not about RPG romance. I consider Longknife to be one of the most interesting of the newly active members, even when I disagree with him (which happens plenty of times) his posts are always interesting and he puts the sincerest effort into it - he just had the same breakdown I had with you three months ago - a breakdown of frustration because you ignore everyone that puts effort into their posts in favor of engaging with Volourn. Just three days ago, you told me "you made good points, I'll respond later since I have to respond to these other people first" and you have yet to do so. I haven't been counting, but thinking back there were at least six other instances of you doing this to me alone, and you have done it to other people too. You never end up responding to what you consider to be "good points".

 

Thank you for post, I'll go through your comments and respond later as I need to respond to others views now

 

There's also the use of "you guys", implying this is some sort of echo chamber, when not three pages back you liked one of my posts for disagreeing with someone else here. We're constantly arguing amongst ourselves, about whether femfreq should be ignored, about how much of feminism is toxic and how much of gaming is toxic, whether male privelege is or isn't a viable reason to discount male opinions, about whether the latest GG scandal is worth attention or not, even about why we are in this (I am in it for free speech, others for taking down specific targets that offend them, and still others just hate hipsters from San Francisco and want to rant on the internet). The reason very few other people participate in this thread is because they a) don't care that much and b) they always stop by making some wild accusation, of course the pro-GG people will defend themselves. When Tale did it, I gave his arguments the time of day and responded in great detail, did I not? I responded rudely when he started in a rude manner, but once he decided to actually argue his points I respected his opinions and gave my counter argument and I'll very much agree to disagree and I've been proven wrong on certain issues in this thread and conceded several times.

 

I am not discussing the prostitutes in GTA now and your link isn't relevant to me also because I don't see the point of discussing it with you again. What is relevant is pointing out that GG is a consumer boycott on moral grounds at it's very core and your response is "psh it's easy to make an exception, your boycott hasn't done anything anyway". I'd hate to see you actually champion a cause you believe in if that is your attitude, you'd give up in a day. Which seems about your track record, anyway, considering how highly you seem to value the victimhood of prostitutes when your male urges come a-knocking.

 

If it's so important to you that we read that link, we told you exactly what you had to do: Provide an archived link. In the amount of time you spent writing posts about it since, you could have done that a hundred times over. It's obvious you do not want anyone to actually read the article, you just want to derail the thread (since this is the umpteenth time you posted the same article) and you find your hook to do so by judging us for not doing it on your terms. But here's a newsflash, your terms are not more important than a legitimate consumer boycott. Judging from your posts, you seem to have less respect for people using peaceful consumer means of protest than you do the people who harass, as at least you recognize their dedication. Why would I waste my time on you if you can't even respect any of my (or Nonek's, or kirottu's) peaceful means and aren't willing to use a minute of your time making an archived link?

 

There is no reason to engage with you. There is no point to it. There is nothing to gain, nothing to learn and no way to convince you since you conveniently just forget when you changed your mind. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - I'm done. I should have stayed done three months ago. When Zorapter or Hiro or Longknife say you're a troll, a couple of months ago I would have disagreed. I enjoy some RPG romances and agree with the vast majority of SJ causes (if not the toxicity of a lot of the groups that espouse it) and because of that I'd never been on the receiving end of your bad faith, manipulative style of debate. Now? None of those guys would be able to convince me that someone else is a troll. You did. Especially when you started throwing around "whore" as a derogatory term to try and troll Volo where you perceived his weakness to be - female loved ones. You aren't here in good faith, you're here to get a rise out of people and I commend you because you're very effective at it.

[Blarghagh]

In the meanwhile, #GamerGate continues to denounce harassment but none of the opposition denounces Jenn of Hardwire getting horrific kidnapping, rape and death threats because #GamerGaters deserve it or something. Twitter removes someone calling FemFreq a fraud in two minutes, but this has been up for four hours despite constant reporting.

 

Warning - Extreme Language: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B7EVmSTCAAANsYQ.jpg:large

[Meshugger]

GNAA troll or actual anti-gg?