Gamergate - OP updated 27 October

[Durandro]

Actually it's about supporting and protecting women from harassment.

What the hell, that guy is so offensive. If anyone said something like that to an anti there would be a massive outcry!

[oplawlz]

Super excited to see Mark Kern go off. Seems like he's finally hit his limit. It'll be nice to see him on TB's channel, Pakman's show, ect let loose about how horse shit and connected the gaming journalism industry actually is.

It'll be interesting to see, but the facts that Kern has publicly said a ton of stupid things, and is a monumental douche according to literally everyone who has ever worked with him - - - well, thats going to make it way too easy to dismiss him.

[mgmg]

He's objected to this sequence of events, but has said he can't speak to correcting anything due to the gag order on him, which is unfortunate but I totally get.

Out of curiosity, how long can gag orders last? There must be some upper limit to them, right? It just doesn't seem right to be able to permanently block someone from speaking.

On the other hand I am also jaded enough about the legal system to believe it is a possibility.

[erthwjim]

A writeup on Anita and how she does want to change video games (well you can interpret how you want) https://archive.today/fwULv

At least Totilo is a more neutral voice compared to the other writers on his site.

[Edge-]

A writeup on Anita and how she does want to change video games (well you can interpret how you want) https://archive.today/fwULv

At least Totilo is a more neutral voice compared to the other writers on his site.

He's gone back and forth between being somewhat reasonable and aggressively pushing agenda's/defending his writers incompetence/unethical behavior : /

[KrazyK923]

Yeah really, I would hardly call Totilo a neutral voice.

[Zoaric]

Two interesting things (imo, at least.)

Should this info be real, that'll be useful:
https://twitter.com/FishyPlays/statu...27216806846464
http://8ch.net/gamergate/res/412380.html#412469

And this happened:


Not quite there yet, but progress has been made at least.

EDIT: Also, 'nother interview to look forward to:

My interview with @TechRaptr tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. EST. We talk about #gamedev but also about the state of the gaming industry.

[Nakura Chambers]

It means exactly what I said it means: Directly appealing to the employers of Pro-GG individuals to sanction or fire them for their opinions. You think that's morally reasonable? Do you think anyone who is in favour of GG in any capacity should be threatened by their employers?

No, but I think journalists who hold their audiences in contempt should be fired.

[KrazyK923]

It means exactly what I said it means: Directly appealing to the employers of Pro-GG individuals to sanction or fire them for their opinions. You think that's morally reasonable? Do you think anyone who is in favour of GG in any capacity should be threatened by their employers?

I think a distinction should definitely be made between, for example, people advocating contacting the advertisers of Gawker or Kotaku or Polygon, or actual places that write about gamers journalism and participated in the "Gamers are dead" hitpieces that all released on the same day vs stuff like what BW has done and had randomly tried to go after the companies of people who expressed even the mildest pro-GG sentiments, where the companies are totally irrelevant and sometimes not related to gaming whatsoever, in hopes of getting them fired.

[Nakura Chambers]

I have never heard of DiGRA. Stop linking videos and detail the specific allegations yourself.

DiGRA is the Digital Games Research Association. It started as a legitimate gaming research company, but it has effectively become a social justice organization that is led by people with an ideology. Unfortunately it would seem that they yield a lot of influence in the gaming industry, as they practically wrote the thesis on why gamers are terrible people. Almost all of the "gamers are dead" articles that came out last year cited a study done by DiGRA.

How about this: the allegation is that gaming journalists are promoting certain games due to... something (Zoe Quinn's vagina? Or because they're all evil feminists of evilness?)... which they shouldn't be? Yes? This is the primary problem of "video game journalism" that GG supposedly resents?

Zoe Quinn sleeping with game reviewers who subsequently gave her game glowing reviews is one just example. Zoe Quinn is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to the #Gamergate movement and ethics in journalism, she is just one of the few prominent figures to get caught. People like TotalBiscuit have come forward to say that companies send him gifts (or attempt to send him gifts) all of the time in order to secure a better review (source). Other gaming journalists such as Liana Kerzner have made similar statements about gifts (source).

Well if that's the case, that is a problem that would solve itself. If Kotaku or whoever the hell else is supposedly in on this gave a bunch of good reviews to bad games, and you bought those games and played them and didn't like them (which can happen anyway but let's ignore that), then you would STOP LISTENING TO KOTAKU. If this was a regular thing people would quickly stop taking their reviews seriously. So it's a non-problem.

I don't think holding journalists to a higher stander is a non-issue. I agree with your sentiment, but these people don't exist in a vacuum. The close relationship that developers share with these journalists goes both ways; in other words, these journalists often times influence how games are designed. A prime example of this is that Electronic Arts is allowing Anita Sarkeesian (not a real journalist) to help develop Mirror's Edge 2. There's also the fact that game developers oftentimes receive bonuses based on how high their game is ranked on Metacritic. Review scores legitimately affect these people's livelihood.

[Calfredd]

Zoe Quinn sleeping with game reviewers who subsequently gave her game glowing reviews is one just example. Zoe Quinn is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to the #Gamergate movement and ethics in journalism, she is just one of the few prominent figures to get caught.

Zoe Quinn's game wasn't actually reviewed but was positively pushed. But yes, Zoe Quinn is no longer relevant which does seem to hold true since I have heard not a peep since the Pax thing (not sure which Pax she was suppose to attend).

[KrazyK923]

Zoe Quinn sleeping with game reviewers who subsequently gave her game glowing reviews is one just example. Zoe Quinn is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to the #Gamergate movement and ethics in journalism, she is just one of the few prominent figures to get caught. People like TotalBiscuit have come forward to say that companies send him gifts (or attempt to send him gifts) all of the time in order to secure a better review (source). Other gaming journalists such as Liana Kerzner have made similar statements about gifts (source).

Wasn't given positive reviews, but did get positive coverage. The distinction is important, even though ZQ as a subject is basically entirely irrelevant at this point.

[Mormolyce]

DiGRA is the Digital Games Research Association. It started as a legitimate gaming research company, but it has effectively become a social justice organization that is led by people with an ideology. Unfortunately it would seem that they yield a lot of influence in the gaming industry, as they practically wrote the thesis on why gamers are terrible people. Almost all of the "gamers are dead" articles that came out last year cited a study done by DiGRA.

My point is, given that I've never heard of them, they can't be that influential. Regardless of how "biased" they supposedly are.

Game developers are influenced by commercial exigencies and their personal tastes in games, anything a research organisation says is extremely unlikely to even factor in.

Zoe Quinn sleeping with game reviewers who subsequently gave her game glowing reviews is one just example.

Show me this "review" (hint: I've read it. Have you?). Link it or I will take that as a concession of the point.

Zoe Quinn is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to the #Gamergate movement and ethics in journalism, she is just one of the few prominent figures to get caught. People like TotalBiscuit have come forward to say that companies send him gifts (or attempt to send him gifts) all of the time in order to secure a better review (source). Other gaming journalists such as Liana Kerzner have made similar statements about gifts (source).

Well no shit, that's a well known problem in game journalism (in fact, all journalism, hell it's not just journalism, even GPs get wined and dined by pharma companies). If you want to talk about commercial conflicts of interest in gaming that's cool but it's not really GG.

I don't think holding journalists to a higher stander is a non-issue. I agree with your sentiment, but these people don't exist in a vacuum. The close relationship that developers share with these journalists goes both ways; in other words, these journalists often times influence how games are designed. A prime example of this is that Electronic Arts is allowing Anita Sarkeesian (not a real journalist) to help develop Mirror's Edge 2. There's also the fact that game developers oftentimes receive bonuses based on how high their game is ranked on Metacritic. Review scores legitimately affect these people's livelihood.

I don't see how Sarkeesian getting a job with a game developer is remarkable, many people cross over from the surrounding industry into game design. Lore became a member of the WoW team after making loads of videos and things. Apart from the fact a large part of the internet has a hate hardon for her and thus demands she not be let into their precious industry. It's just partisan dog whistling at this point.

It's up to developers how they reimburse their employees, based on Metascore seems kind of silly but their business I guess. This is presumably a large studio you're talking about here so the specific allegations of "collusion" between semi- and non-professional game journalists and indie game devs (according to GG) doesn't apply. In any case, whatever bias there is in the score because of that it's drowned out by the sea of other reviews the game is being scored by on metacritic, and those reviews can be as biased as the author likes in any way they prefer.

Honestly, the whole thing is mountains out of molehills.

[Rokom]

Gonna chime in quick that the whole "Anita working on Mirror's Edge 2" was proven to have been false several months ago. I mostly agree with GG, but Nakura seems to be working on the info back from like October and before.

As is mentioned in thread OP, GG is a complicated topic that is not easily defined, and many people have many different reasons for being on either side. In my opinion, I think a lot of it is just people not wanting to be seen as monsters by others, but maybe that's just me.

[Mormolyce]

I think the misinformation is a key problem with GG. Plus not long after the Zoe Quinn thing blew up and GG became a thing, a lot of GGers moved the goalposts. Especially since the Zoe Quinn thing turned out to be nothing.

[KrazyK923]

Gonna chime in quick that the whole "Anita working on Mirror's Edge 2" was proven to have been false several months ago. I mostly agree with GG, but Nakura seems to be working on the info back from like October and before.

Yeah he's most certainly working on old information.

In my opinion, I think a lot of it is just people not wanting to be seen as monsters by others, but maybe that's just me.

That's kind of one of, if not the, biggest reasons it even exists.

I think the misinformation is a key problem with GG. Plus not long after the Zoe Quinn thing blew up and GG became a thing, a lot of GGers moved the goalposts. Especially since the Zoe Quinn thing turned out to be nothing.

"Moved the goalposts" meaning what? Also it doesn't help when the misinformation is being directly supplied by people who are actively against the movement. Its not like misinformation is just happening (There is some of that), but its actively being fed by certain people with various agendas.

[Doctor Amadeus]

I think the misinformation is a key problem with GG. Plus not long after the Zoe Quinn thing blew up and GG became a thing, a lot of GGers moved the goalposts. Especially since the Zoe Quinn thing turned out to be nothing.

Just seemed to be a trend of Hate for women and anybody else, that in my opinion got a lot more attention than it deserved, but I agree with this statement made for the most part. Corruption in gaming journalism, didn't suddenly over night become a problem. That is because it wasn't, That isn't to say that corruption doesn't exist, but it doesn't begin and end with political correctness, or feminism, or anything else.

[Mormolyce]

IMO there probably is corruption in video game journalism, but it's on the big end of town - read, the big game mag/sites being wined and dined by the big name publishers to get good reviews for big budget games like Assassin's Creed or something. It's not in the tiny indie community, and if there is corruption in there, nobody cares. I hear it's cliqueish (which you'd expect) and that's no doubt a bigger problem anyway. It's certainly not about Zoe Quinn having sex with 10,000 guys (because you should always believe angry blogs written by jilted exes) to get a positive review that doesn't exist for a game nobody has ever heard of (hell, Gamergate got a million times more publicity for Depression Quest than the brief mention in Kotaku ever did).

[KrazyK923]

...you do know it was more than just the positive coverage Depression Quest got on that article right? There was the issue of Quinn being friends with Robin Arnott, a sound developer who was on a panel at Indiecade 2012 and was one of the judges that gave Depression Quest the game of the year, and then the subsequent year selected Depression Quest to be prominently featured during Indiecade's Night Games festival, which was their open arcade. Despite being nowhere near the quality of the other games that were included in that festival, including Paper's Please, a Brawling game, and another I can't remember.

Furthermore, despite your repeated claims that GamerGate initially started as some focus on Zoe Quinn's sex life, the actual first sparking of the entire controversy known as "The Quinnspiracy" was not the blog post itself, or even the video, but when Zoe Quinn herself DMCA'd MundaneMatt's video where he was covering the blog post and then showed a still image of Zoe's game.

You had whateverhisnamewas' blog post about being Quinn's ex, and while people in general gravitated toward it because, well, its the internet and it loves drama, it would have died down if the DMCA didn't happen. You'll notice a pattern here. Its called the Streisand Effect. Time and time again, the conversation (Whether it was about ZQ, or conflicts of interest in the Gaming Industry, or even just GamerGate itself as a general topic) exploded early on when groups/websites/people were censoring. It was the attitude of forbidding a topic from being discussed because certain people didn't like it that made GamerGate happen and then grow.

Of course, by even talking about this, we're once again going back to ZQ who really doesn't matter at all, and like I said in the other thread, it always seems to be either people who are pretty notoriously trollish (Like Nakura) or people against GG who bring her up and then lament the fact that she's being talked about as if it proves their argument.

[Nakura Chambers]

My point is, given that I've never heard of them, they can't be that influential. Regardless of how "biased" they supposedly are.

Game developers are influenced by commercial exigencies and their personal tastes in games, anything a research organisation says is extremely unlikely to even factor in.

Of course game developers want to make money, but that doesn't mean there isn't a narrative that people are trying (and arguably succeeding in) to push.

Show me this "review" (hint: I've read it. Have you?). Link it or I will take that as a concession of the point.

As others have pointed out, it wasn't a review, my mistake, but she had close relationships with two people at Kotaku who wrote positive articles about her game:
http://tmi.kotaku.com/the-indie-game...riciahernandez
http://kotaku.com/depression-quest-t...eal-1476630988

Well no shit, that's a well known problem in game journalism (in fact, all journalism, hell it's not just journalism, even GPs get wined and dined by pharma companies). If you want to talk about commercial conflicts of interest in gaming that's cool but it's not really GG.

I agree it's not limited to gaming, but that doesn't mean we should just ignore it.

I don't see how Sarkeesian getting a job with a game developer is remarkable, many people cross over from the surrounding industry into game design. Lore became a member of the WoW team after making loads of videos and things. Apart from the fact a large part of the internet has a hate hardon for her and thus demands she not be let into their precious industry. It's just partisan dog whistling at this point.

Okay, it seems I was operating under outdated information (as Rokom pointed out), I am a bit late to this thread and movement. If I make a mistake, please call me out on it. However, if a major company did actually let her have any say whatsoever in a video game, it would be inherently wrong. She is a radical feminist who is trying to push her feminist agenda. She's also a confirmed con artist and liar who doesn't even like video games. Would you want Blizzard to hire a neo-Nazi to design the next WoW expansion?

It's up to developers how they reimburse their employees, based on Metascore seems kind of silly but their business I guess. This is presumably a large studio you're talking about here so the specific allegations of "collusion" between semi- and non-professional game journalists and indie game devs (according to GG) doesn't apply. In any case, whatever bias there is in the score because of that it's drowned out by the sea of other reviews the game is being scored by on metacritic, and those reviews can be as biased as the author likes in any way they prefer.

Agreed, it's their company and their rules. If they don't like the contract, then they can either deal with it, try to change it from within or find another employer. I was merely pointing out that this does affect people's livelihood and has real world consequences.

Honestly, the whole thing is mountains out of molehills.

What is wrong with people caring about the industry of one of their favorite hobbies? How is this any different from avid readers caring about the book industry? Or sports fans caring about the sports industry?