Gamergate - OP updated 27 October

[unholytestament]

this right here is the reason gamergate is considered a bunch of transphobic children with no actual moral integrity nor interest in journalistic ethics. its a failure to see that in siding against extremists youve fallen into the trap of becoming extremist yourselves. this post is just all cringe and its entirely representative of how others see your movement.

I am so glad the entirety of GG is judged based on the actions of someone who has around 30 posts and had never posted in this topic until today.

[Eleccybubb]

its a shame you are so overly defensive that you inadvertently defend the stereotype of bigotry that others thrust upon you.

So are you actually gonna discuss this topic or are you just here to disrupt the thread and bash others?

[Eleccybubb]

can someone tell me what gamergate is in simple terms without writing a fucking book lengthed paragraph in every page

Honestly I'm interested too. I'd like a non biased explanation because I've read dribs and drabs but I still don't get exactly what it is.

[Eleccybubb]

You really wont find a truly good one on the internet to be honest. pretty much most mainstream sources are heavily biased against gamergate and gamergate-based sources are generally better for the way things went down but are colored in their favor in regards to the seedier parts of the movement at times.

Well this is what I can gather so anyone here feel free to start dumping on me. From the front page a woman tried to get into gaming and some devs shut her down which started a small crap storm then the whole Zoe Quinn thing kicked it off I think and then after that IDK. Tbh I wanna avoid getting involved in this because tbh I just wanna play games and have fun and not have politics surrounding it. But also I do have a curiosity to try and learn about it.

[unholytestament]

its a shame you are so overly defensive that you inadvertently defend the stereotype of bigotry that others thrust upon you.

for a bunch of people who really hate it when people assume you are bigots, its shocking that when an actual bigot, a perfect stereotype is called out that you then attack the guy calling them out.

Except you're not just calling him out. You are literally taking some random nob who just walked in and saying "THIS LOSER IS YOU!"

But it comes as a surprise to no one that you're that disingenuous right off the bat.

[unholytestament]

you know its starting to get pretty tiring repeating myself but i dont understand why you cant tell the difference between saying "shit like this just reinforces other peoples' opinions on you" and "this is what you are goobergobblers!!" my personal opinions of gamergate arent even present aside from me disliking the bigotry.

just... its so tiring. why are you so duty-bound to defend that crap? its so disappointing to hear gamergate say that they want to espouse the bigots in their ranks and i have to have this uphill climb to even get recognized as wanting to do the exact same thing. like holy hell man.

Please step down from your high horse and point out where I have defended that crap. Was it where I called him a random nob? Where I pointed out he has had absolutely nothing to do with us before today?

Enlighten me.

[Deleted]

except you're not just calling him out. You are literally taking some random nob who just walked in and saying "this loser is you!"

but it comes as a surprise to no one that you're that disingenuous right off the bat.

gamer is dead!

[unholytestament]

its when you decided that it would be better to attack the guy whos pointing out the problem than it is to say "you know what i agree that shit isnt aceptable."

So because I don't condone yet another person claiming to be neutral holding up some completely random person who came from out of fucking nowhere as the poster child of Gamergate that means I condone the actions of the random person?

I can't believe you're literally preaching an "us vs them" mentality while claiming to be neutral.

[Deleted]

its when you decided that it would be better to attack the guy whos pointing out the problem than it is to say "you know what i agree that shit isnt aceptable."

We already know it isn't acceptable though. You literally aren't making a new point, we've known this from the off. Anti GG don't care what we say, they see us all the same. And we can't stop randos from posting under the GG name.

You say "deal with the bigots in our ranks". Well how the hell do we deal with them? Anyone can use a hashtag on twitter.

Whats the point in calling him out, when the people that he's calling out will just ignore what we are saying about him and focus entirely on what he's saying.

[unholytestament]

how is it that you have once again failed to realize that i have never once claimed this person is the "poster child of gamergate"? i legitimately cannot understand.

this post is just all cringe and its entirely representative of how others see your movement.

So yeah...

tolerating bigotry, especially when its been a pretty common problem for gamergate, is very different from us vs them cognition. its upholding a moral standard and saying that while they might be entitled to their speech its not considered socially acceptable to be a bigot.

And since there is no tolerance of bigotry taking place here this is a non issue.

But you did literally say I am defending this random person's crap because I don't agree with you.

[unholytestament]

then show it. you guys are doing a pretty bad job right now.

We owe you nothing. We don't care about an image problem and we don't have to prove anything to you, especially considering how you continue to preach the same bullshit when people have pointed out the flaws in your logic.

its not for them. fuck them.

How about fuck all of this? We should not concern ourselves with virtue signaling when it accomplishes nothing.

so people who are unaware of the situation are less predisposed to consider you all bigots.

Except they don't care and the second they do they're going to be fed the narrative that the gaming press shoves down their throats.

- - - Updated - - -

which is to say that the cringey things said and the opinions thereof are the typical things that come to mind for people who look at gamergate. nowhere there is me saying that he is actually representative of your movement. i specifically said "how others see your movement" because i am talking about perceptions that people have. and whether you like it or not the perception that gamergate is partly driven by bigots is very much alive and kicking.

you can argue that those people are wrong and i would largely agree. but unfortunately whether they are right or not means nothing when you are talking about public perception. the funny thing about perception is that it doesnt need to match reality.

You see, this line of reasoning falls apart because of the message you're trying to push.

You really want us to care about our image problem. We don't but you really, really, REALLY want us to. And this guy is apparently the image people have of us. We MUST do something about this.

Except we must nothing. We don't care about the image problem. A random troll screaming hate speech is nothing. The fact that you can't recognize him as a troll says more about you than it does Gamergate/anti-Gamergate/whatever. The guy strung together buzz words with reckless abandon. He's either some random edgy tryhard or a false flagger.

not a single condemnation of hatred. barely even an acknowledgement of it.

I repeat, because I don't agree with you that MUST mean I agree with him.

your energy has almost all been spent trying to snarkily pin me in a "gotcha" and paint me as the guy who is the problem.

Well seeing as how you have continually ignored the fact that I insulted the guy, and my initial post on the matter was to point out how insignificant he was, plus the fact that you're still insisting we should care about this image problem...

What's your damage?

We don't care. Move on.

[hrugner]

speaking as someone who is actually outside of it all... sadly thats not the full truth.

people are just tired of it in general. both sides are considered to just be horrible. theres not really any perception of saving graces. yeah people are tired of the references but they are just as tired of the people on both sides as much if not more so.

part of that is in fact that gamergate does have a reputation of having notable portions of it be bigots who are just there to hate social justice as a concept as well as the people who pervert it.

thats the truth of it. deal with it however you want but thats how you guys are perceived.

That's just it, there's nothing to "deal with". I can bring up issues on the topics GG is interested in with other people as they manifest in gaming or in other current events and easily come to an understanding with them. That's sort of the end of it. I can also bring up how identity politics and screaming harassment is making certain people hard to deal with and hear how a person has left a forum or dropped a social media service because of identarian politics.

Now, sure, if I wanted to make someone say they supported GG, I may have a rough time of it. But why would I bother since there's no real purpose in getting claims of support from people who already support everything under the GG umbrella. I'm not some identarian nutter.

[unholytestament]

first its that im conflating them as representative of you. now its you dont care. i get that you can change your position based on the context of the argument but thats pretty damn convenient.

Except nothing changed. I pointed out how insignificant this guy was from the start and you accused me of being defensive.

so let me ask you why you should not care?

Why do you continue to ask questions I have answered?

whats there to gain when the potential loss is neutral people and the favor of the public who doesnt buy the mainstream media narrative but might still find gamergate to be sketchy?

Neutral people like you who seem to think they have a right to tell us what to do? To command us to virtue signal at their beck and call?

Good riddance.

do you not care about the long term? do you think that you will maintain even a modicum of significance? do you not care that the world who doesnt buy the narrative still considers gamergate to be an annoyance in the gaming community? is that not something that should be cared about? is that not something that should be improved if at all possible when it costs you next to nothing?

We're not going to prove we're getting shit done by virtue signalling, we do it by getting shit done.

this is the problem i have. not caring is not only pretty shitty morally but its a failure of understanding what gamergate is in the context of the rest of the world. i would have thought that youd care about trying to maintain morality when you are fighting immorality but i guess gamergate is just a bunch of vindictive children like the perception of the public attests. thats really a shame.

My morality is not effected by random trolls. My morality is not effected by peoples' perception of me. My morality is not effected by "neutral parties" who think they can push me around.

Image is not morality. I don't need to be loved to get shit done. It is ridiculous that you are conflating the two.

it doesnt matter if hes trolling or legitimate. not tolerating the behavior and calling it out is a good thing. not just for the impressions of others but morally.

I am not tolerating the behavior. I just so happen to also not be tolerating your bullshit.

which is why it baffles me that youve failed to even once actually call out his behavior for what it is.

So... Calling him a troll and labeling what he has said as hate speech counts for nothing?

Obviously it's because I'm still disagreeing with you.

well when you consider that my problem with gamergate is the deflection instead of outright calling people on their shit of course i ignore that you insult the guy and that you called him insignificant. because that stuff doesnt matter.

Your problem.

YOUR

PROBLEM

Get over it.

thats the problem i have. its pretty shitty to not care. thats the long and short of it. its just pretty shitty to not care about basic morality.

So now you have conflated the image problem with our morality, which is hilarious since you accused me of changing my position at the start of this post.

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gamergate is a fucking disappointment when the issues it wants to tackle are real and legitimate but now because of the childish antics that the public has perceived because of the vocal minority of extremists and links any attempt of bringing up those topics to such real progress as a culture and as a medium has been held back. its so sad that we cant have a civil discussion on sexuality and women in games or the role and moral expectations of gaming journalists. its fucking sad that any ability to discuss these topics have been destroyed over the past two years because of both sides of this conflict.

Guy grinds the topic to a halt complaining about a post we would have laughed at and ignored and complains that people not doing what he wants them to is preventing the real discussions form happening.

- - - Updated - - -

Will someone call me when steele is done editing his post?

- - - Updated - - -

GOD DAMN IT I KNEW I SHOULD HAVE BEEN SCREENSHOTTING THIS!

[hrugner]

thats a lot less true than you think when those topics are pretty synonymous with gamergate which then makes your position seem less credible as the perception is that gamergate is full of a bunch of anti-sjw nutters.

I hate to break it to you, but these aren't hypothetical encounters I'm talking about. I've had no problems with reduced credibility and lets be honest, SJW's are the low hanging fruit of insult comedy at the moment. The only risk in being anti-SJW is that you may bore people with your material.

[Faroth]

can someone tell me what gamergate is in simple terms without writing a fucking book lengthed paragraph in every page

Honestly I'm interested too. I'd like a non biased explanation because I've read dribs and drabs but I still don't get exactly what it is.

It's been going on long enough that it's hard to summarize in less than a paragraph, but the TLDR I'd offer is this:

A game dev's ex wrote a blog post that had some details causing people to ask questions about journalistic integrity, or how "in bed" journalists were with developers when telling readers where to put their money. Any discussion was met with widespread deletion of comments, banning, and shadow banning, which only fueled the flames.

It kind of snowballs in different directions from there due to different people wanting to wage their own different wars that are all, for the most part, loosely connected, but not entirely on point of the original questions raised.

The "gamers are dead" day of articles threw a match on a powder keg already soaked in gasoline.

[Eleccybubb]

It's been going on long enough that it's hard to summarize in less than a paragraph, but the TLDR I'd offer is this:

A game dev's ex wrote a blog post that had some details causing people to ask questions about journalistic integrity, or how "in bed" journalists were with developers when telling readers where to put their money. Any discussion was met with widespread deletion of comments, banning, and shadow banning, which only fueled the flames.

It kind of snowballs in different directions from there due to different people wanting to wage their own different wars that are all, for the most part, loosely connected, but not entirely on point of the original questions raised.

The "gamers are dead" day of articles threw a match on a powder keg already soaked in gasoline.

Wow. I find it amazing (not in a good way ofc) that one little thing started something massive. And tbh I've never personally listened to Journalism when it comes to games, always made my own decision.

[Faroth]

Wow. I find it amazing (not in a good way ofc) that one little thing started something massive. And tbh I've never personally listened to Journalism when it comes to games, always made my own decision.

Honestly, it was a pebble that started an avalanche, but it wasn't THE sole occurrence. Gamers were frustrated with gaming press before that.

If certain sites had just responded by saying "It's come to our attention that there are concerns over this. While we support our employees, please be assured we take this matter seriously and will be doing an internal investigation. Not just on this single incident, but on our policies as a whole."

One thing that came out of the fiasco was how many journalists were writing about developers and projects they were personally financially invested in through patreon and kickstarter. Again, sites should have addressed this along the lines that "new sites and technologies grow faster than company policies respond. Our employees are gamers too and these projects excite them and in their excitement they may not have thought of potential conflicts of interest. We're updating our policies on these sites and will have our updated policy posted soon" and then updated their policies to include phrasing regarding these (some did do just this after the blow up).

Instead of pointing a finger and saying "our readers are horrible, nasty people that deserve to be executed!" some rather basic, simple PR practice should have gone a long way to bringing people to discussions more calmly.


In regards to forming your own opinion, it's a good stance, but I understand the frustration. You've got $100 for fun for the next month and there are 5 games coming out in the next 45 days. You can't buy them all to form your own opinion, so you go read reviews to determine where to put your money.

Twitch and YouTube offer a new way of judging a game being to your taste, but that's still pretty new. A lot of people still rely on what they expect to be a fair shake from a reviewer and as reviews started downgrading games based on "message" or personal offense rather than "do the controls work?" people got more frustrated.

I think part of the issue is sites are suffering from the rise of things like Twitch and YouTube. They're the old media thrashing against new media, just as print magazines did to these sites in the past.

Then you throw in personal and political ideologies into the mix and it's no surprise it explodes.

[Eleccybubb]

Honestly, it was a pebble that started an avalanche, but it wasn't THE sole occurrence. Gamers were frustrated with gaming press before that.

If certain sites had just responded by saying "It's come to our attention that there are concerns over this. While we support our employees, please be assured we take this matter seriously and will be doing an internal investigation. Not just on this single incident, but on our policies as a whole."

One thing that came out of the fiasco was how many journalists were writing about developers and projects they were personally financially invested in through patreon and kickstarter. Again, sites should have addressed this along the lines that "new sites and technologies grow faster than company policies respond. Our employees are gamers too and these projects excite them and in their excitement they may not have thought of potential conflicts of interest. We're updating our policies on these sites and will have our updated policy posted soon" and then updated their policies to include phrasing regarding these (some did do just this after the blow up).

Instead of pointing a finger and saying "our readers are horrible, nasty people that deserve to be executed!" some rather basic, simple PR practice should have gone a long way to bringing people to discussions more calmly.


In regards to forming your own opinion, it's a good stance, but I understand the frustration. You've got $100 for fun for the next month and there are 5 games coming out in the next 45 days. You can't buy them all to form your own opinion, so you go read reviews to determine where to put your money.

Twitch and YouTube offer a new way of judging a game being to your taste, but that's still pretty new. A lot of people still rely on what they expect to be a fair shake from a reviewer and as reviews started downgrading games based on "message" or personal offense rather than "do the controls work?" people got more frustrated.

I think part of the issue is sites are suffering from the rise of things like Twitch and YouTube. They're the old media thrashing against new media, just as print magazines did to these sites in the past.

Then you throw in personal and political ideologies into the mix and it's no surprise it explodes.

Tbh said it once and I've said it before. I wish this crap had never infested video gaming because games are just there to be played and enjoyed. Not to have politics and bullcrap dragged into them. Bit strong I know but just my two cents.

[unfilteredJW]

Tbh said it once and I've said it before. I wish this crap had never infested video gaming because games are just there to be played and enjoyed. Not to have politics and bullcrap dragged into them. Bit strong I know but just my two cents.

Adding in modern day politics can be awesome as far as narrative is concerned.

What's bothersome is there are people out there that think there's no issue with asking someone to change their creative work because it bothers them. At least that's been my flavor of torch during this whole thing.

[unholytestament]

Adding in modern day politics can be awesome as far as narrative is concerned.

What's bothersome is there are people out there that think there's no issue with asking someone to change their creative work because it bothers them. At least that's been my flavor of torch during this whole thing.

You need only look to The Witcher 3 and the circus of people saying the Polish developers making a game based off of Polish mythology are racist for not including people of color.

Diversity quotas are the death of creativity.