Journalism and Bias in the Gaming Industry

[Malcador]

 

 

 

Yeah but was some weird assumptions of what the non-casual gamers are like.

 

More accurately: there was a description of a certain subset of gamers, there was an (arguably weird) assumption that people outside gaming equate gamers with that subset of gamers, and some readers made the (arguably weird) assumption that the description was meant to characterize all gamers/all hardcore gamers/whathaveyou.

Sure, she was being very back handed about it, but I could see where the punch is, add in context of her attitudes and opinions and it isn't that unfair to her.

 

She wasn't heralding casual gamers so much as ones wanting experiences and deep emotional content or some crap like that, if I recall.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Malcador

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

 

"False narrative", lol what phrasing.

 

 

 

What else would you call a lie that got repeated so many times it's now treated as the truth? Despite the fact that its veracity can be checked by literally 10 minutes of googling?

 

 

 

Everyone knows that "Gamers are dead" is used, as Hurlshot said, a literary device for all the articles, culminating with Leigh Alexender's piece.

 

 

 

"Culminating" is a weird word for the article that arguably started the whole thing.

 

And no, "gamers are dead" wasn't used even once in the articles. "The death of gamers" got used once in an article's title, and "Gamers are over" in another's. That's, like, two times a half, out of 12?

 

 

You might not be the best-informed authority on the subject is what I'm hinting at.

 

 

 

Instead doing a thesis again, i can link to someone that already did almost a year ago: http://adland.tv/adn...rket/1027025677

 

 

 

"Again"?

 

...Moving on.

 

 

 Gamers have been accused of being rabid death-threat sexist ****s, and the "gamer culture" has been wished dead and then declared dead by an onslaught of gaming sites and magazines.

 

The "gamer culture" link goes back to the article itself.

 

"Wished dead" links to... Jacobin, a magazine self-identifying as "a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture." An onslaught of gaming sites indeed!

 

"Declared dead" links to the Ars Technica article that makes... no statement at all about "gamers" as a whole? And even has "death" in quotation marks in the title, necessitating quite a few intellectual leaps to see it as "an onslaught" either? How surprising.

 

 

The rest of the article is seemingly aimed at marketing people, noting that if gamers become perceived by the wider public as "socially stunted, possibly mentally ill, misogynists", that will lead to sales plummeting. Which is... surely very tragic for marketing people, although I have no idea why it should concern me in the slightest? It's not like I played any new game that wasn't crowdfunded in the last two years or so.

 

 

 

I do hope that you are not mad with all your bolding text.

 

 

You mean the bolding of - gasp! - a single word? Nitpicking much?

 

 

 

 

 

She wasn't heralding casual gamers so much as ones wanting experiences and deep emotional content or some crap like that, if I recall.

 

 

 

Which would, presumably, be... very bad... because... erm... why exactly?

Edited April 27, 2015 by aluminiumtrioxid

[Zoraptor]

wanting demographics distribution in media to actually resemble reality

Which is perhaps the most pointless argument in games ever, because games are not meant to reflect reality, their purpose in the vast majority of cases is specifically not to be realistic. That's true whatever genre you look at from the most casual like Farmville or The Sims (albeit both have a veneer of 'realism' but their purpose is escapism, and as below, to make money) to those targeted at the core gamer demographics. The only time it isn't true is for hardcore sims and the like- usually small market, mostly cannot care less about politics- and games as stories. Things like Gone Home are fine, of course, and there's nothing to stop them being made if people want to, there's just no obligation for people to play, care about or buy them nor for companies to decide they should make Gone Home: The FPS instead CODBLOPS#.

 

It's also why people get annoyed over the Vavra type stuff, you have people demanding his game not reflect reality to conform with their beliefs and the demographic distribution of somewhere like the US- not even modern Bohemia.

 

So you don't think "entertainment media has to serve its customers" (ie. "ME"; see also GG's persistent and somewhat weird fetishization of the consumer identity) is a tad entitled as far as attitudes go?

It's more 'entitled' to think the other way, really. If the two alternatives are (1) a company should serve its audience (me) and (2) a company should not necessarily serve its existing audience but should serve (me)/ my political opinions then it is obvious number 1 is the correct answer- and that, primarily, is why Leigh A got such a negative response as well. There's nothing 'entitled' about that, aiming for your audience is economics 101 and is a mutually compatible aim between supplier and consumer. Doesn't mean you can't aim for a different audience with a different product of course, but that is not generally what sjws want, they want everything to conform to their particular vision. Which is, of course, impossible since there is no monolithic sjw group any more than there is a monolithic GG group.

 

Have I ever mentioned that I loathe the word entitled? Because I do.

[Nonek]

Sorry to respond so belatedly, busy with whatnots.

 

I would say I am a moderate, I neither support the trolls whom allegedly harass or anyone with a similar hateful agenda whether they are sending death threats, accussing innocent devleopers of rape when they know it is a lie, or whatever. Neither do I support the corrupt games media declaring gamers are dead, then trying to weasel out of it, and pouring scorn on the consumer, even though they are in fact the racist, misogynistic, people hating, and regressive element that is trying to deliver the false narrative that all gamers are degenerate harrassers from their position of power in the media.

 

If they ceased their fascist actions, censoring, quoting Goebbel's Listen and Believe, and demonising the innocent to hide their own morally repugnant behaviour then I would not call them fascists either, but they do not, they continue preaching as their deeds blacken and spewing hatred for all of humanity, until in their bitter loathing and mentally deranged states they come to believe that #killallmen is a reasonable thing. As a moderate i'm obviously against that, I just want a games media that is fit for purpose not these sick and twisted individuals.

[Volourn]

"wanting demographics distribution in media to actually resemble reality"

 

L0L SJWs don't know reality. The reality is that most people are anti SJWs and are  on feminists. But, most people are for equality which SJWs are not. Whya re SJWs such lying nazis? Why do they hate women so much they ahrass, bully, and intimidate them out of the game industry? Pro GGers have been supporting women in gaming for DECADES, SJWs have not. That's a FACT,

[Malcador]

Which would, presumably, be... very bad... because... erm... why exactly?

I said that was bad ? Personally, people getting emotional over polygons is very weird to me, but to each their own. It doesn't bode well for people who like games as they were, newer gamers seem to be difficulty averse (remember the article a ways back about games being inaccessible to those who suck )

But someone thought it was a casual v. non casual one that she was on about, when it wasn't.

[Meshugger]

 

"False narrative", lol what phrasing.

 

What else would you call a lie that got repeated so many times it's now treated as the truth? Despite the fact that its veracity can be checked by literally 10 minutes of googling?

 

You simply call it a lie if you think it is a lie. "False narrative" is a soft, indirect description that belongs in critique of the arts. Lets compromise and say "BS", shall we?

 

 

Everyone knows that "Gamers are dead" is used, as Hurlshot said, a literary device for all the articles, culminating with Leigh Alexender's piece.

 

 

"Culminating" is a weird word for the article that arguably started the whole thing.

 

And no, "gamers are dead" wasn't used even once in the articles. "The death of gamers" got used once in an article's title, and "Gamers are over" in another's. That's, like, two times a half, out of 12?

 

...You might not be the best-informed authority on the subject is what I'm hinting at.

 

No need to put me on a pedestal like that. I am just another anonymous guy on the internet.

 

As I already said, it's a phrase used for those articles published between August 28th to September 1st. After DMCAs (https://twitter.com/mundanematt/status/502575957178580993, censorship (http://imgur.com/a/m1FDm, https://twitter.com/GamesNosh/status/501743426111827969), mass-deletions on reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2dz0gs/totalbiscuit_discusses_the_state_of_games/), mass-deletions on 4chan (https://archive.moe/v/thread/258661684/#258661943) and almost on every major gaming site, something was simply up in the air. Add to that growing sense of scepticism and new discoveries of corruption (http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2ejs7v/gaming_journalists_patricia_hernandez_of_kotaku/, http://i.imgur.com/sDOjHhM.jpg)one simply knew that a response from the press was just a matter of time. But was the response? Well, those articles we just talked about, which were pretty much a grand declaration of war. Talk about not knowing or understanding your audience

 

 

 

Instead doing a thesis again, i can link to someone that already did almost a year ago: http://adland.tv/adn...rket/1027025677

"Again"?

 

...Moving on.

 

Listen & Believe.

 

 

 

Gamers have been accused of being rabid death-threat sexist ****s, and the "gamer culture" has been wished dead and then declared dead by an onslaught of gaming sites and magazines.

 

The "gamer culture" link goes back to the article itself.

 

"Wished dead" links to... Jacobin, a magazine self-identifying as "a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture." An onslaught of gaming sites indeed!

 

"Declared dead" links to the Ars Technica article that makes... no statement at all about "gamers" as a whole? And even has "death" in quotation marks in the title, necessitating quite a few intellectual leaps to see it as "an onslaught" either? How surprising.

 

 

The rest of the article is seemingly aimed at marketing people, noting that if gamers become perceived by the wider public as "socially stunted, possibly mentally ill, misogynists", that will lead to sales plummeting. Which is... surely very tragic for marketing people, although I have no idea why it should concern me in the slightest? It's not like I played any new game that wasn't crowdfunded in the last two years or so.

 

The point wasn't you.

 

The point is that this "false narrative" is not just a GamerGate thing. The article is posted by Adland, an online advertisment pundit rated 6th or 22th most influential for business, depending on if you read Brand Republic or Business Insider. It's one of the bigger ones that the industry itself is following.

 

 

I do hope that you are not mad with all your bolding text.

 

You mean the bolding of - gasp! - a single word? Nitpicking much?

 

 

Confusing a joke with nitpicking? You do need a hug.

[Ineth]

Here's a funny guessing game:  StormFront Or SJW?  

 

Some of them are really hard. Like when I read...

• "As for the charge of genocide? Accept it. You can argue against it, but what’s the point? Any conscionable person should want the [...] race destroyed."

...I was sure it had to be StormFront idiots trying to justify the Holocaust. But nope, it's from a far-left radfem SJW news site indulging their totally-not-racist™ fantasies of ridding the world of white people.

 

Also funny when you have two quotes that say pretty much the same thing...

 

• "That’s why on almost every TV commercial , you see an interracial couple. In the movies, in magazines, they promote “colour-blindness” as a way to solve the problem. Well, it doesn't work!"
• "Color blindness is essentially choosing to be ignorant of a real, and crucial reality. I'm not sure how you can have a functional society when it is based on policies of ignorance. Also, how does colourblindness stop racial assimilation?"

...yet one is from a SJW raging against white supremacy, and the other directly from a StormFront forum.

[ravenshrike]

 

wanting demographics distribution in media to actually resemble reality

Which is perhaps the most pointless argument in games ever, because games are not meant to reflect reality, their purpose in the vast majority of cases is specifically not to be realistic. That's true whatever genre you look at from the most casual like Farmville or The Sims (albeit both have a veneer of 'realism' but their purpose is escapism, and as below, to make money) to those targeted at the core gamer demographics. The only time it isn't true is for hardcore sims and the like- usually small market, mostly cannot care less about politics- and games as stories. Things like Gone Home are fine, of course, and there's nothing to stop them being made if people want to, there's just no obligation for people to play, care about or buy them nor for companies to decide they should make Gone Home: The FPS instead CODBLOPS#.

 

It's even more pointless when you consider that demographics as a whole don't apply to the subset that is gamers. Not to mention you have to separate the 'hardcore' gamers from the 'filthy casuals' as the people in the latter group will almost certainly never shell out for a higher end console or PC. Then of course you must filter the 'consoletards' from the 'PC master race' as those demographics are also liable to be different. Then of course there's the fact that the idiots who wrote the articles claim to want 'well written' minority/female characters as if people who can actually write such characters are littering the ground everywhere just waiting to be picked up. That is so far from the case as to be laughable since the white male characters sure as **** aren't well written which means the other characters will be just as bad.  I mean, there are maybe 5-6 medium to large game devs that can consistently write characters that aren't complete **** and even they fail horribly on a fairly regular basis. Case in point, the trans character in DA:I is possibly the worst Mary Sue I've seen in an RPG I've played by a non-indie developer. And yes, I fully realize I'm using the term off-trope as they are not the protagonist. Doesn't change the fact that the character sucks and is a Mary Sue.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Here's a funny guessing game:  StormFront Or SJW?  

 

Some of them are really hard. Like when I read...

• "As for the charge of genocide? Accept it. You can argue against it, but what’s the point? Any conscionable person should want the [...] race destroyed."

...I was sure it had to be StormFront idiots trying to justify the Holocaust. But nope, it's from a far-left radfem SJW news site indulging their totally-not-racist™ fantasies of ridding the world of white people.

 

Also funny when you have two quotes that say pretty much the same thing...

 

• "That’s why on almost every TV commercial , you see an interracial couple. In the movies, in magazines, they promote “colour-blindness” as a way to solve the problem. Well, it doesn't work!"
• "Color blindness is essentially choosing to be ignorant of a real, and crucial reality. I'm not sure how you can have a functional society when it is based on policies of ignorance. Also, how does colourblindness stop racial assimilation?"

...yet one is from a SJW raging against white supremacy, and the other directly from a StormFront forum.

I scored 10/20.

 

...I think I need a drink.

[Keyrock]

 

Here's a funny guessing game:  StormFront Or SJW?  

 

Some of them are really hard. Like when I read...

• "As for the charge of genocide? Accept it. You can argue against it, but what’s the point? Any conscionable person should want the [...] race destroyed."

...I was sure it had to be StormFront idiots trying to justify the Holocaust. But nope, it's from a far-left radfem SJW news site indulging their totally-not-racist™ fantasies of ridding the world of white people.

 

Also funny when you have two quotes that say pretty much the same thing...

 

• "That’s why on almost every TV commercial , you see an interracial couple. In the movies, in magazines, they promote “colour-blindness” as a way to solve the problem. Well, it doesn't work!"
• "Color blindness is essentially choosing to be ignorant of a real, and crucial reality. I'm not sure how you can have a functional society when it is based on policies of ignorance. Also, how does colourblindness stop racial assimilation?"

...yet one is from a SJW raging against white supremacy, and the other directly from a StormFront forum.

I scored 10/20.

 

...I think I need a drink.

 

I did slightly better 11/20.  Fun, if somewhat disturbing, game.

[Longknife]

 

 

Here's a funny guessing game:  StormFront Or SJW?  

 

Some of them are really hard. Like when I read...

• "As for the charge of genocide? Accept it. You can argue against it, but what’s the point? Any conscionable person should want the [...] race destroyed."

...I was sure it had to be StormFront idiots trying to justify the Holocaust. But nope, it's from a far-left radfem SJW news site indulging their totally-not-racist™ fantasies of ridding the world of white people.

 

Also funny when you have two quotes that say pretty much the same thing...

 

• "That’s why on almost every TV commercial , you see an interracial couple. In the movies, in magazines, they promote “colour-blindness” as a way to solve the problem. Well, it doesn't work!"
• "Color blindness is essentially choosing to be ignorant of a real, and crucial reality. I'm not sure how you can have a functional society when it is based on policies of ignorance. Also, how does colourblindness stop racial assimilation?"

...yet one is from a SJW raging against white supremacy, and the other directly from a StormFront forum.

I scored 10/20.

 

...I think I need a drink.

 

I did slightly better 11/20.  Fun, if somewhat disturbing, game.

 

 

12/20 I AM KING for the next five mins til someone gets 13/20.

 

 

Pro-tip: The SJWs tend to write the shorter stuff or the stuff that doesn't carry that air of trying to appear intelligent. (For example I got "I ****ing hate _____" and knew it was SJW) Don't let that fool you into voting every paragraph as Stormfront though cause wtf TIL a lot of SJWs are quite fond of racial segregation.

[Meshugger]

Not even Sargon manages to get a full pot: 

 

 

I haven't dared to test it myself yet. Too afraid of the results.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

That test gives me the chills. Sad thing is that some libruls will defend it.

 

[Nonek]

Hatred, hatred never changes.

[Deadly_Nightshade]

12/20 I AM KING for the next five mins til someone gets 13/20.

 

14/20!

[Meshugger]

Ok, i gave it try now: 12/20. Nightshade is still the leader.

 

Some those sources were reaaaaally weird. Like this one: http://www.donotlink.com/framed?670905

 

Just read the first paragraph.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Meshugger

[PrimeJunta]

Ick, I did not like that article.

 

I'm more like

 

[Meshugger]

^I see white people with perfect bodies showing off with great heterosexual undertones.

 

Check your white cis-het privilege you scum!

[Malcador]

Looks grey to me.

[Gfted1]

Woof, that's one ugly woman in that statue. Probably because she had to share her nutrients.

[Keyrock]

^I see white people with perfect bodies showing off with great heterosexual undertones.

 

Check your white cis-het privilege you scum!

Perfect bodies?  No way she's packing a C cup under that dress. 

[Meshugger]

Newest Pakman video, now with some antiGG folks:

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Newest Pakman video, now with some antiGG folks:

 

Who is that again?

[Meshugger]

 

Newest Pakman video, now with some antiGG folks:

 

Who is that again?

 

 

I just started to listen, but apparantly he's been writing some sci-fi.