Journalism and bias in the gaming industry.

[Rosbjerg]

Contiuing from here.

 

For the uninitiated: The 'Gamergate' controversy started in early 2013, as the release of Zoe Quinn's "Depression Quest" was criticized from gamers who believed that the game had received a suspicious amount of attention in relation to it's quality and scope. Eron Gjoni (Zoe's ex boyfriend) wrote a blogpost accusing Quinn of having had an affair with Kotaku journalist Grayson, prompting the critics to conclude that the attention and success of "Depression Quest" was due in part to unfair bias and nepotism in the industry.

 

Several articles from both sides of the issue has highlighted inconsistencies in the stories of both Grayson, Quinn and Eron as well as the many other examples that have followed.

 

 

Gamergate is wideley seen in the public, as a culture war over the diversification of gaming, artistic recognition and social criticism of video games and the gamer social identity.

 

 

 

For the posters in this thread:

Many bloggers and populists have tried to steer the discussion into areas they feel are the underlying issue - ranging from simple bias, to widespread misogny or misandry. I would however prefer that we keep this discussion as objective and clean as possible and so I will be keeping an a extra close eye on this thread. This certainly does not mean that you may not discuss any issue you feel, but rather that you should be thoughtful of  how  you discuss it with those you disagree with.

Especially in regards to these three guidelines:

 

Discrimination: Obsidian has a zero-tolerance policy with regard to racial, ethnic, gender, religious, disablement, and/or sexually discriminating remarks.

Harassment: We ask that the users of this board treat one another with respect, even when opinions differ. Personal attacks that are intended to cause unwanted attention, embarrassment, or harm will not be tolerated. In addition, Obsidian does not tolerate disrespectful and/or slanderous posts about its competitors, developers and publishers. Such posts will be subject to editing or deleting, with its posters censured or banned.

 

Objectionable Content: The use of abusive, vulgar or profane language, even if hidden through the use of symbols or other characters is not tolerated. Intentionally posting workarounds to our language filters are prohibited. Posts may be edited or deleted at any time by the moderation team, and depending on the severity and frequency of said posts, the poster may be censured or banned.

 

Any posts in violation of the Forum Guidelines will either be removed or modified and authors of such posts will receive warnings and/or have their content placed under moderated review.

 

[Meshugger]

Remember all those deleted posts during Total Bisquits AMA at reddit? All those strange shadowbans? All those subreddits that got nuked from existence and along with several users?

 

One mod has had enough and leaked it all, lots of juicy stuff:

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2ydvd2/since_the_beginning_gamergate_has_been_about/

 

TL;DR-version:

- They were stupid and incompetent.

- They actually thought that deleting content firmly would shut people up.

- Not liking something was enough to nuke threads/reddit.

- They seem not to like games or gaming culture to begin with.

- They seems to talk about the nude photos of Zoe with each other. They are simply more equal than others.

 

This article gets mentioned, hohoho: http://www.reactionzine.com/an-open-letter-to-games-media/

 

//Edit:

 

 

You will anger readers by taking a stand. Some of them will leave. Some of their threats to leave forever are not, in fact, empty. You’ll get flak from NeoGaf and Reddit. 4Chan will make the same ugly threads about you as they do about me and my friends.

 

Do it. Piss them off. Take the risk. Make a decision now that they are not worth your time and that the ad revenue they provide is not worth the toxic atmosphere they bring to your sites. They’re not worth continuing to bear the reputation of being an unsafe place for people who are not straight men.

..

..

If you tell certain readers that they are not welcome, they will squawk like parrots: “Free speech!” Let them practice their “free speech” somewhere else. They can start their own blogs or they can go find a website that still condones their behavior. Your websites are not public parks. You have no obligation to let people say whatever they want on your sites.

In the piece that I’m drawing inspiration from, Todd Harper wrote that “if you are interested—really interested in [changing gaming culture] then you are going to have to fight for it.” We know that you know what needs to happen: you need to fight. You have the necessary clout to take on this fight. This will mean shedding some readers, burning some bridges, and suffering harassment. But you need to take that risk

Edited March 9, 2015 by Meshugger

[HoonDing]

That reminds me, Dreamfall Ch 2 is out tomorrow.

[Meshugger]

I am not sure if i am following.

[BruceVC]

I am not sure if i am following.

 

Dreamfall its a game that is being released in Chapters, it was funded through KS 

[Blarghagh]

That's not the part he's not following. How does it have to do with the topic?

[Malcador]

Dreamfall has some SJW elements, I guess that was it.

[Fighter]

You know what's really annoying? More and more I see these sj types defend themselves when compared to Jack Thompson by something like this, "Well I'm not saying games cause violence but they do affect attitudes."

 

And attitudes lead to actions. So stop pretending you're saying something different.

Edited March 9, 2015 by Fighter

[Orogun01]

You know what's really annoying? More and more I see these sj types defend themselves when compared to Jack Thompson by something like this, "Well I'm not saying games cause violence but they do affect attitudes."

 

And attitudes lead to actions. So stop pretending you're saying something different.

The accusation that games cause violent refers to violent acts such as shootings, but with sexism is a bit harder to prove/disprove and because its more widespread due to the fact most consider it harmless, crusaders have all the elements to support their idea that media causes sexism. Although, they can't really prove it.

[Meshugger]

An interview with an anonymous AAA-developer. Read and weep.

 

https://archive.today/5fHyd

 

 

We had an extremely talented concept artist who has worked with us for years, she would come up with awesome ideas and character concepts, she also happened to be gay. So when she would draw women she would do so with a slight masculine air to then, sometimes in revealing outfits and large breasts.

 

She no longer works for us, because her work has been deemed "high risk" at "encouraging negative feedback". I'd love to share her work with you but I just cannot be the cause of her being hounded by the media and the anti-GG crowd.

..

..

..

If I piss off GamerGate the worst that will happen is my address and phone number will end up all over the internet and I'll receive a few angry emails from the handful of idiots trolls that take things too far. But at least the "Progressive media" will lap it up and defend me in droves to suit their agenda.

 

If I piss off the media or get on the wrong side of these critics, that's my job.

 

Frankly, I'll take angry emails and having to change my phone number over losing my job and potentially being blocked from working in the industry ever again.

..

..

..

Adding more diversity to games is a good thing but it shouldn't be forced on developers to do, we shouldn't be pressured to shoehorn in gender rolls, equality and so on to be more "inclusive"

Gamers of every sex, race and sexual persuasion have been playing games for decades, and will continue to do so.

 

The current narrative tries to take sexuality, gender and race and run with these issues, load them in to their gun and fire off a few rounds in GamerGates direction, completely misleading the audience and indeed general news in to crafting a world that just isn't there.

 

I want to give her a hug

[Volourn]

She doesn't need a hug. She needs the hateful an evil and nazi SJWs  to stop chasing women out of the game industry. Not to mention for them to stop the **** shaming and telling women what they can eat, wear, draw, think, or say. That is EVIL.

 

\As evidenced by that Harlequin romance pic with all the 'hunky hunks'  heterosexual white males' are the only ones who salivate over bodies they find 'sexy'.

[Meshugger]

She doesn't need a hug. She needs the hateful an evil and nazi SJWs  to stop chasing women out of the game industry. Not to mention for them to stop the **** shaming and telling women what they can eat, wear, draw, think, or say. That is EVIL.

 

\As evidenced by that Harlequin romance pic with all the 'hunky hunks'  heterosexual white males' are the only ones who salivate over bodies they find 'sexy'.

 

Uh? Never heard about that before. Link?

[Volourn]

Uh.. it was the last thread on this issue. Someone showed a pic with a bunch of books that had  'hunky hunks' on the cover - clearly using 'hot male bodies' to sell books to women sallvating over them as pieces of meat.

[Meshugger]

Ah, found it. Nvm.

[Zoraptor]

 

One mod has had enough and leaked it all, lots of juicy stuff:

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2ydvd2/since_the_beginning_gamergate_has_been_about/

 

Relevant to last thread, it appears that 'Daniel Vavra' was added as a filter phrase for their automod/ manual moderation queue.

[Barothmuk]

And attitudes lead to actions. So stop pretending you're saying something different.

They are.

 

Thompson wanted to ban games for silly reasons. Sarkeesian provided a *critique of trends in games.

 

*more specifically a painfully moderate critique that constantly felt the need to reassure the viewer that they're not a bad person and that liking these games did not make them a person.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Barothmuk

[Meshugger]

 

And attitudes lead to actions. So stop pretending you're saying something different.

They are.

 

Thompson wanted to ban games for silly reasons. Sarkeesian provided a *critique of trends in games.

 

*more specifically a painfully moderate critique that constantly felt the need to reassure the viewer that they're not a bad person and that liking these games did not make them a person.

 

 

You make it sound like it is just some Mary Sue with the most nicest of intentions Nah, that girl is a con man that pays lip service to radfems....and she wants to change games:  http://www.hardocp.com/news/2015/02/27/8_things_anita_sarkeesian_wants_to_change_about_video_games#.VP6gLOEo4WQ

 

But i want to be the bringer of good news, so i will provide you with the updated ethics policy of Eurogamer: http://www.eurogamer.net/policies.php?view=how-we-work

[Meshugger]

IGDA Presentation on how Game Designers can Self-Censor themselves better (for cultural sensitivity) from GDC 2008: http://www.slideserve.com/lahela/tom-edwards-igda-localization-sig-chair-principal-consultant-founder-of-englobe-inc

 

This is how you kill creativity. Not even Bioware is spared from the rightous fury of geocultural sensitivity brigade: An elephant demon in Jade Empire is insensitive to Hindus. Flags of Taiwan in Ninja Gaiden is insensitivie to the Chinese, etc.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Meshugger

[Volourn]

A lot of this is SJW nonsense is largely over sensitive whities who feel the need to over compensate for others' evil. It's nonsensical.  Look at their gatherings - it's more white than gamer conventions. LMAO

 

I saw a pic on the Codex of a 'we need more blacks in game development'  with basically only white people and one asian person in the entire pic with no black person unless I missed it. If the people you claim to be fighting for don't want you to fight for them perhaps they don't need to be fought for.

 

\P.S. I also don't see a lot of crying over the over emphasis of blacks in the NBA which leads to a lot of often posisbly 'racist' nicknames for white players. There should be a law/rule to dicate that whites should have 60% of NBA roster spots to be closer to their actual total representation in the US (or whatever the actual number is). Heh.

 

 

Also, instead of  different places and cities banning or making it really hard for men to work with children (because all men are rapist pedophiles) we should mandate them being 50%ish.

 

 

L0LZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

[Fighter]

They are.

 

Thompson wanted to ban games for silly reasons. Sarkeesian provided a *critique of trends in games.

 

*more specifically a painfully moderate critique that constantly felt the need to reassure the viewer that they're not a bad person and that liking these games did not make them a person.

 

They are both saying games cause violence. The sj critics are just going the long way around in doing so. According to them bad media raises bad people. Bad people do bad things.

 

As far as their criticism. It's clear from the very notion of this social responsibility they put on entertainment that they simply will not be happy when anyone can find things that they like. No, for their vision to come to pass the media overall will need the "right" composition of elements. As a whole the media will need to be used as an education tool. They will not be happy otherwise.

Edited March 10, 2015 by Fighter

[Namutree]

 

 

And attitudes lead to actions. So stop pretending you're saying something different.

They are.

 

Thompson wanted to ban games for silly reasons. Sarkeesian provided a *critique of trends in games.

 

*more specifically a painfully moderate critique that constantly felt the need to reassure the viewer that they're not a bad person and that liking these games did not make them a person.

 

 

You make it sound like it is just some Mary Sue with the most nicest of intentions Nah, that girl is a con man

 

So she was a man all along eh?

[Malcador]

Not directly related, but still was rather interesting. Though it is probably old hat to everyone here.

 

[Meshugger]

Based mom tearing the ADL a new one:

 

[Meshugger]

Based mom tearing the ADL a new one:

 

 

^Video above retweeted by Steven Pinker (with 159K followers). Meaning this guy:

 

Edited March 10, 2015 by Meshugger

[Fighter]