Gamergate - OP updated 27 October

[mickybrighteyes]

Still amazed at how this whole mess has carried on.

Anywhere else... if people lie to and insult their audience, someone gets fired (usually the liars and those who were the source of insults).

Brian Williams and Imus should have been in gaming media. They'd have kept their jobs there.

[erthwjim]

On the video games as art debate, jwcaine made such a writeup: https://medium.com/@cainejw/video-ga...n-58de9a227ffd

[KrazyK923]

I've noticed this seems to be the newest, most popular, thing SJWs are trying to use to defend their horribly biased demanding of an industry change.

Haven't really heard of it in such a loud voice until fairly recently. But now its like,

"HURR ART CAN BE ITNERPRRETTED, SO LISTEN AND BELIEVE AND CHANGE THE INDUSTRY LIKE I WANT!"

While the article is good, I feel this would have been more than enough to show how their argument is nonsense:

"I happen to agree with McIntosh, Sarkeesian, and so many others on one point. Video games need criticism just as art does. Thankfully, video games have had criticism for decades.

...

Some critics in today’s popular websites rarely allow the reader to derive for themselves. Instead, readers are called to activism and action. The piece is not meant to argue the nature of the work. Instead, the criticism of today is meant to argue the nature of the culture surrounding the work and demand a change by that culture.

Criticism in video games media demands action from the reader. Judgment is rendered by the critic. Failure to act on that judgment is labeled any matter of socially ostracizing labels. The video game critic seeks to define the work for the reader before the reader can define it for themselves.

In the fitful rush to define the work, dissenting views are shouted down and games are defined out of view. If video games must accept criticism to be art, we must put into place protections so that art can be protected from social demands that define artwork out of the marketplace for consumption.

Video game criticism has become chaotic. It has shifted away from art criticism and toward social criticism. In this process, social demands of decency from a select group have dictated what art is acceptable and accessible for others."

/article

[eem5]

I dunno, I enjoyed the rest of it as well. It served as a means to look at the issues right now (the bit you highlighted) but it also offered a view of what mature criticism should be, and a guideline on how to do it. It serves many purposes.

[KrazyK923]

Oh it was definitely good. That's not what I mean. I mean the explanation about why the "but muh artistic interpretation" argument is wrong can be summed up very succinctly.

[Zoaric]

Barely GG related in any way, but it's an interesting read at least. It predicts the
growth being pushed predominantly by male PC gamers with a lot of spending power.
https://opengamingalliance.org/press...h-for-pc-games

Also, Mark has been added to the blockbot now... wonder why.

[Mahourai]

Oh it was definitely good. That's not what I mean. I mean the explanation about why the "but muh artistic interpretation" argument is wrong can be summed up very succinctly.

Succinctness is no measure of truth, although personally I'm swayed more by your judicious deployment of the solid "paraphrase my detractors and add spelling and grammar errors to make them sound stupid" line of argumentation. The classics never go out of style.

[KrazyK923]

Succinctness is no measure of truth, although personally I'm swayed more by your judicious deployment of the solid "paraphrase my detractors and add spelling and grammar errors to make them sound stupid" line of argumentation. The classics never go out of style.

Hah, well I do indeed try. I also never claim to be stating deep or thought-provoking counter arguments for the most part. Succinctness isn't a measure of truth, of course. However I do think there's some kind of immeasurable value to stating a counter argument as succinctly as possible. The article is great, but I've seen a few now regarding GamerGate where it drones on and doesn't seem necessary.

The only one I really have seen that I would feel needs it is this guy's academic refutation of Tropes vs Women in Gaming that he's doing. Since it goes in depth with feminism about stuff most people have no idea about (Especially regarding third-wave stuff).

[Mahourai]

His stuff is sleight of hand. Watch the trick in action, from part one of his series:

Prior to the publication of the Tropes vs. Women series, McIntosh and Sarkeesian set the tone and subject matter for their series as any good academic will do:

In addition to being loads of fun to play, research has found that gaming can improve problem solving skills, teamwork, creative thought and multi tasking; and improve hand eye coordination and enhance perceptual and cognitive abilities.

Unfortunately in addition to all of these benefits, many games tend to reinforce and amplify sexist and downright misogynist ideas about women.

...

So let’s now turn to the overarching accusation that McIntosh and Sarkeesian launch here: video games reinforce or amplify sexist ideas about women and, as a result, are a cause of sexist behavior or belief systems.

...

Research that video game media transmits equally with other forms of media is still very young by the admission of the researchers in the field. For McIntosh and Sarkeesian to claim that the research indicates this is true is completely without merit. No research currently out there states that video game or media in general CAUSE particular behaviors. All of the research is correlational and concerns attitudes.

See? The author seamlessly edits Tropes vs Women's claim from being about reinforcing ideas to being about causing behaviors. CAUSE is even capitalized, because the author has a very low opinion of your intelligence and knows that emphasizing the word gives the false impression that it actually appears in the material quoted, and because he knows it's a jump his audience has already made for themselves and he therefore doesn't need to justify.

[KrazyK923]

"Slight of hand"



You're the one twisting the actual author's words. He's not saying there that AS/JM are claiming it causes behaviors.

[Mahourai]

"Slight of hand"

I spelled it right the first time.

You're the one twisting the actual author's words. He's not saying there that AS/JM are claiming it causes behaviors.

Yes, that is literally in plain English what the author claimed in the material I quoted. Here it is again, although I'm not sure why it was insufficient the first time:

"So let’s now turn to the overarching accusation that McIntosh and Sarkeesian launch here: video games reinforce or amplify sexist ideas about women and, as a result, are a cause of sexist behavior or belief systems."

Yeah, that sure is exactly what he said.

And, get this, I'm not even saying he's wrong to make the leap. Ideas inform actions, after all, so talking about the two as if they're unrelated is not productive. But it's the difference between "watching Birth of a Nation is correlated with an increase in belief of revisionist accounts of the Reconstruction-era South" and "watching Birth of a Nation makes people form lynch mobs".

[KrazyK923]

The fact that you don't see you're literally doing what you're criticizing him for is frankly amazing.

[JohnBrown1917]

So this is what GG has been up against all this time.

[Deleted]

So this is what GG has been up against all this time.

Not really, Wu has little to nothing to do with what GG is after, she's simply a by product.

[barackopala]

Not really, Wu has little to nothing to do with what GG is after, she's simply a by product.

I wouldnt call it a by product but a flea on a dinning table, it's there just to make noises and annoy people while they enjoy a good journalistic meal

[erthwjim]

The wonderful thing about AS and Fem Frequency is she makes the transcripts available, from just one video I find the following (http://www.feministfrequency.com/201...en/#more-18661)

Research has consistently found that exposure to these types of images negatively impacts perceptions and beliefs about real world...

In other words, viewing media that frames women as objects or sexual playthings, profoundly impacts how real life women are perceived and treated in the world around us. And that is all without even taking into account how video games allow for the more participatory form of objectification that we’ve been discussing in this episode...

Compounding the problem is the widespread belief that, despite all the evidence, exposure to media has no real world impact...

In short, the more you think you cannot be affected, the more likely you are to be affected...

Yep, this may be cherry picking, but everything she says in her videos leads to these types of statements. Video games not only cause but reinforce people's views of women, that's her belief, and she thinks because they're interactive, they are more detrimental than movies or still images, without even having the research to back those views up. And somehow being self-aware of the issues makes you more prone to them (although I believe there are studies that show otherwise). She takes studies about still images and other media and applies them to video games, which is outside the external validity of the study. She can't make leaps like that, no matter how much she thinks it makes sense to her, that's poor use of science.

[JohnBrown1917]

Not really, Wu has little to nothing to do with what GG is after, she's simply a by product.

Well, okay. the type of person GG is up against.

[Deleted]

Well, okay. the type of person GG is up against.

Oh they're completely bonkers, that's a given. I've said it before in this thread, I would love to read a psychologists take on the doublethink inherent in the SJW mindset.

[Senka]

Edit: This got a lot longer than I expected. Sorry, just some musings to read if you're bored. I know I shouldn't use a forum thread just like a blog, but it's never my original intention.


When I was going through Mark Kern's Twitter a day or two ago, I found him looking at and talking about an old Ben Kuchera Twitter message from a few years ago. It was also linked in this thread, the one where Ben was talking about ethics in journalism being important. I have no idea what the context or subject was at that time, but it was amazing to read that.

He did seem to be a good person at one time, but eh...on second thought, for him to turn into what he is now just means he had a proclivity for it the whole time, so maybe he was never such a good person after all. TotalBiscuit was also talking about Kuchera's 2012 messages, that Ben simultaneously destroyed himself and whatever he was doing on Penny Arcade. I wish I had saved the Twitter URLs in case anyone was interested in that, but there wasn't a lot anyway.

Anyway, I then went to Ben Kuchera's Twitter account, and I found another interesting set of current messages. Basically, he's thinking Gamergate people are crying that people like him want just a small part of the industry to change and listen to people like him. He thinks that 95% of the industry goes our way, so why can't we just let others be happy with their 5%? Will we not be happy until 100% of the industry makes games just for "real gamers?" Oh, poor persecuted us and our oppressed minority in the industry.

You know, if you really didn't know anything about this whole thing, he sounds really sympathetic to me, though still totally insane. I would totally sympathize with him...if I didn't know he's an insane, pathological liar like the rest of them. We know they don't want just a few games here or there for their own interests and visions of what gaming should be, because I'm 99% certain they're ALREADY OUT THERE. We know that, while they may not want to change 100% of the industry, they won't rest until what they want is at least a majority.

And so this is what's so horrible about what these "gaming journalism" sites have done: sided with people like them because it gets more traffic because the public is stupid and hates thinking. That one TechRaptor article comes to mind, the one that basically said any journalist with an agenda is the most despicable thing. Preference for what you cover is one thing, but an outright agenda is WRONG. Well, unless that agenda is, "Be true, honest, and fair."

Obviously...that is not what we've seen for many years now. It's fine to have a personal agenda to support your friends, of course, but what is wrong with these people that they can't separate personal life from professional life? They literally talk like the two are one and the same. I mean, I understand they look at shitty behavior in corporations and news corps and just want to be laid back, but they have NO concept of any boundaries after being the "cool everyday gamer" for this long. And THAT is why I have called, and probably will always call, them crazy. People that act closer to Kuchera are outright insane, though. They're dismissed.

P.S.: I'm only using the word professional as a formality. We know the sites in question are just horrible blogs in reality, which is the same reason I put gaming journalism in quotes. As long as they continue to call themselves game journalists, they need to continue to be gone after. They could end all of this at once if they just said, "We're just some people that blog what we think about gaming." (Didn't Destructoid's Lead Editor actually say this early on?) I mean, that is literally what they do, and have done for years, but they need to make that official. I would still despise them and think them crazy, but at least then that wouldn't matter...not that it ever really did, heh.

[Mahourai]

You know, if you really didn't know anything about this whole thing, he sounds really sympathetic to me, though still totally insane. I would totally sympathize with him...if I didn't know he's an insane, pathological liar like the rest of them.

The idea that one's ideological opponents are simply frothing lunatics who'd agree with you if they just took their lithium is an appealing perspective that is unfortunately never true.