We have received three submissions pertaining to an unfolding story.
It all started in August with a controversial editorial by Leigh Alexander at the gaming news site Gamasutra. It was followed by Intel pulling their RealSense ads from the site. This, in turn, led a Linux Dev to claim he'll no longer make any kernel updates for Intel.
Intel Pulls Ad Campaign from Gamasutra
The war of words over misogyny vs. political correctness in the video game industry continues, with Intel pulling ads from the gaming news site Gamasutra for its RealSense gesture interface platform in response to an email campaign organized by a grassroots 'Gamergate movement'.
The latter group mobilized in response to an editorial by Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander, who listed a series of misogynistic incidents involving masses of anonymous gamers, then argued: 'We still think angry young men are the primary demographic for commercial video games — yet average software revenues from the commercial space have contracted massively year on year'. Alexander concluded: '"Gamer" isn’t just a dated demographic label that most people increasingly prefer not to use. Gamers are over. That’s why they’re so mad."
Posters at other gamer sites, as well as reddit, expressed satisfaction at the news.
And then things got even more interesting... [more after the break.]
We then received this succinct summary:
Linux Kernel Developer Strikes over Intel's Withdrawal of Ads on Gamasutra
Yesterday, Intel withdrew their advertising campaign on gaming news website Gamasutra, over recent changes to editorial position in opposition to #Gamergate. Today in response Linux Kernel developer Mathew Garrett announced on his blog that he would no longer be using unpaid time to work on patches for Intel in the kernel.
Intel's decision to withdraw support came after Gamasutra blogger Leigh Alexander's controversial remarks sparked a firestorm of outrage among gamers. Alexander declared in her article that "gamers are over" and that the industry needs, and would be forced into, a feminist, "social justice", direction. Outraged readers began a campaign soliciting Gamasutra advertiser to withdraw support from the site, and were successful in the case of Intel.
The campaign by Gamasutra's readers is part of the larger #Gamergate movement to expose corruption in gaming journalism.
And, for those who would appreciate some more details:
Linux Kernel Developer Refusing to Update Linux Kernel over #GamerGate
This is a double whammy,
Apparently the #GamerGate controversy is spilling over into the IT world.
Yesterday Intel decided to pull it's ads from the Game site Gamasutra over comments made by Leigh Alexander who wrote in August an article titled “gamers are over.”
From the article:
“Traditional ‘gaming’ is sloughing off, culturally and economically, like the carapace of a bug,” Alexander wrote at the time. “This is hard for people who’ve drank the Kool-Aid about how their identity depends on the aging cultural signposts of a rapidly evolving, increasingly broad and complex medium. It’s hard for them to hear they don’t own anything, anymore, that they aren’t the world’s most special-est consumer demographic, that they have to share.”
Today a Linux kernel dev felt this was Intel showing support for a consumer revolt steeped in misogyny and has vowed not to make any kernel updates for Intel
Here's a direct link to the dev's post
Excerpt from the post:
Recently, as part of the anti-women #GamerGate campaign[2], a set of awful humans convinced Intel to terminate an advertising campaign because the site hosting the campaign had dared to suggest that the sexism present throughout the gaming industry might be a problem. Despite being awful humans, it is absolutely their right to request that a company choose to spend its money in a different way. And despite it being a dreadful decision, Intel is obviously entitled to spend their money as they wish. But I'm also free to spend my unpaid spare time as I wish, and I no longer wish to spend it doing unpaid work to enable an abhorrently-behaving company to sell more hardware. I won't be working on any Intel-specific bugs. I won't be reverse engineering any Intel-based features[3]. If the backlight on your laptop with an Intel GPU doesn't work, the number of fucks I'll be giving will fail to register on even the most sensitive measuring device.
It has been said that the internet routes around breakage. Is this a tempest in a teapot that will blow away and be forgotten? Or is this a canary in a coal mine bringing attention to a deep-lying problem that will keep arising until properly solved? And how could that be achieved?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Monday October 06 2014, @05:48PM
Every time I read about this stuff, I picture a massive number of people in a room. On one side, you have grown adults stomping their feet and screaming like children because people are making things they don't approve of. On the other side, you have grown adults stomping their feet and screaming like children because the first side is complaining about the fact that people are making things that the second side actually likes.
One thing I know for a fact though: The Social Justice Warrior fad is certainly making me far LESS tolerant of other people, not more.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday October 06 2014, @05:57PM
A perfect description, and I agree about the tolerance ... because it's not justice. It seems like another push of the same sort as racial quotas, etc.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Monday October 06 2014, @06:18PM
Personally I envision those staged and scripted political "debate" shows on infotainment cable news shows where each side acts like an idiot so viewers will be enticed to tune in and watch the commercials. Although your imagery is pretty good too.
I'm tired of teen boys defining "real gaming" as idiotic WWII FPS, but then again I have little tolerance for the SJW phenomena.
The funniest part of the whole story is they somehow found some people gullible enough to not think "games journalism" or "journalism in general" is anything other than complimentary copy for the ads. Where do they find idiots like that anyway?
Another comedy is teen boys like sex and violence a bit more than average, and its kind of funny watching the SJW crew tap dance around how getting rid of games will somehow change ... anything at all. Its not like getting rid of a product will change attitudes, the SJW crew will just have to fight over the sudden growth of violent misogynistic rap music or anime or something other than games. Meanwhile the boys are at least as stupid WRT not recognizing that slashing prostitutes in GTA is probably a non-optimal strategy for actually mating with real human chicks.
I have an idea that will horrify both sides, yet probably actually work. It requires a bit of a classical education and you have to have read the play "Lysistrata" by, IIRC, Aristophanes. For those too lazy to read the play (Its Fing hilarious BTW) or even too lazy to see a movie version, the summary of my idea is if chicks in 2014 are tired of being mistreated by boys, they might want to consider the strategy of keeping their legs together till the boys behave a little more appropriately. Oddly enough that might be slightly motivational for teenage boys. Lets be honest though, there's way too many chicks who prefer the bad boy, no matter if they'll admit it or not, so this isn't going to work and frankly the persons to blame are the girls lack of self control.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @07:07PM
Over all I agree, but you should probably look up #NotYourShield, there are a lot of women and minorities that are upset they're being lumped in with the teenage boys throwing a tantrum.
Also, I'm a gamer as well. I've been gaming for the better part of 30 years. Primary Adventure/RTS/RPG, with the occasional MMO. There's a lot more out there than GTA and FPS.
I'm not particularly happy sites like Gamasutra have slandered and declared me dead while fighting off trolls. All the sudden if feels an awful lot like I'm back in middle school being called names on the playground.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Tuesday October 07 2014, @08:31AM
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday October 07 2014, @10:50AM
I realize you're being facetious, but "Gamer" is a very broad term.
What this article, and 10+ other articles all released in a 24 hour period, did was the equivalent to "all men are rapists". Whether you fit in the rapists category or not you're now a rapists. Maybe it's easy to just brush that off because we all know it's not true. In this case It hurts more, IMHO, because I choose to identify as a gamer. I chose to identify as a gamer a long time ago, "before it was cool", and I was ridiculed for it. Now gaming the in thing and people who don't even like games call themselves gamers, criticize games made almost 30 years ago, and use that to call the hobby misogynistic.
You want to call yourself a gamer and make games you like instead of attacking others for the games they play. I'm all in for that, I'd even throw some money their way to help out. Gaming is very diverse, it's too bad there are so many people screaming it's not.
This is an shot of people saying gaming isn't inclusive vs. people actually gaming [twimg.com], I can attest when I visit my brother-in-laws game store for Street Fighter night it looks very similar to the gaming tournament.
So on one hand we have a bunch of people, ironically almost all white, telling a huge group of men, women, conservatives, liberals, young, old, gay, straight, black, white and everything in between they aren't being inclusive enough and they need to kick out the cis-white-male misogynist trolls. And the Gaming community just hangs it's head and does a collective face palm.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:06PM
"SJW this, SJW that", sounds like you're trying to blame everything bad thats ever happened on these so-called "social justice warriors", which if they even exist are at best a tiny handful of people. Where have I seen that [wikipedia.org] kind of thing before [wikipedia.org]...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 06 2014, @08:26PM
The point is that there's a bunch of misbehaving gaming journalists hiding behind that SJW rationalization. It wouldn't have even been brought up, if the ideology weren't used as the primary path of attack on the entire gaming community.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:29PM
> The point is that there's a bunch of misbehaving gaming journalists hiding behind that SJW rationalization.
Please define "misbehaving" and it would help to show some examples that can be verified with links so we can see for ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @09:04PM
Go ask someone on the #GamerGate twitter feed for examples. They have so many screen caps and archived pages it'd take months go crawl through everything.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:39PM
> Go ask someone on the #GamerGate twitter feed for examples.
The old, "You do the work to prove me right" answer is a great way to discredit your position.
Google it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:55PM
Your logical fallacy is: Burden of Proof [yourlogicalfallacyis.com]
Most of the comments here are easily destroyed just by playing the "Spot the Logical Fallacy" game.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday October 06 2014, @10:09PM
Most of the comments here are easily destroyed just by playing the "Spot the Logical Fallacy" game.
It's not a game! This is very serious business! And Logical Fallacies are destroying civil discourse! We don't want to just put spots on them and call it done.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 06 2014, @10:15PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:02PM
Every time I see a
comment with a
logical fallacy in it,
I put a post-it note
on my screen to
mark where it is.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:14PM
Oh goodie, a logic troll. What bridge did you crawl out of?
No matter how much you cry, she's still a dumb whore.
(Score: 1) by Jesus_666 on Monday October 06 2014, @09:29PM
Essentially it's transparent flamebait masquerading as a socially conscious editorial and I have to admit that it's slightly peeving me. Still, though, it's an obvious attempt at generating traffic (and thus ad revenue) by means of trolling so it's not worth actually getting angry about. Unfortunate for actual socially conscious writers, though; they might end up getting associated with Gamasutra's little publicity stunt.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @09:34PM
Just to point out Gamasutra was one of 10+ articles posted on different sites in the period of 24 hours, and I believe probably used the least most offensive language, which is why this is a bit if a bigger deal than just one site generating click bait.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by Jesus_666 on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:52AM
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:35AM
I have to admit that it's slightly peeving me.
Dude! You should get that looked at, by a professional! Sooner is better than later. Slight peeving often leads to far worse things.
(Score: 1) by boltronics on Tuesday October 07 2014, @10:20AM
It'll probably take a solid week to go through everything that's happened so far, from the censorship when people have spoken out (even on Reddit and 4chan), to the video game journalists colluding, to the media calling gamergate a bunch of misogynists "worse than ISIS"! Zoe Quinn - who was responsible for bringing to light the corruption in game journalism - is a self-proclaimed feminist, and claims that she was attacked not due to evidence of corruption but because she is a woman (which is BS). It's a long story. Here are some links from InternetAristocrat back when it started, which covers a lot of ground:
Quinnspiracy Theory: The Five Guys Saga
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5-51PfwI3M&list=UUWB0dvorHvkQlgfGGJR2yxQ [youtube.com]
Quinnspiracy Theory: In-N-Out Edition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKmy5OKg6lo&list=UUWB0dvorHvkQlgfGGJR2yxQ [youtube.com]
Quinnspiracy Theory: White Castles and Ivory Towers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km3DZQp0StE&list=UUWB0dvorHvkQlgfGGJR2yxQ [youtube.com]
In response to legitimate criticism, Zoe Quinn also issued a take-down of MundaneMatt's video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Equc1QnQ9rw&list=UUxXUQuvoiIAlpM2osoAitjQ [youtube.com]
MundaneMatt has been particularly vocal on YouTube, and has constantly said the whole time #GamerGate is about transparency in journalism - contrary to many claims from the other side. I suspect the kernel dev the summary mentioned hasn't paid close enough attention to the issue, and has only heard from one side - or he has ties to the game journalism industry, which is entirely possible given all the censorship we have seen in unlikely places. After all, a lot of women are behind #GamerGate too. JemryMellows [youtube.com] has been an active supporter, for example. This kind of push back from the "white male teenage women-hating gamer" label video game journalism has been throwing around has come from from women and minorities in the form of #NotYourShield.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday October 07 2014, @11:04AM
I've been following this as well and it's ridiculous that you've only scratched the surface of what's going on here. You didn't even mention the IGF judges taking bribes and playing favorites, picking winners to the competition they had money personally invested in. The whole incident with The Fine Young Capitalists, where Zoe basically attacked them and had their project shut down, then started her own and received promotion from Nathan Grayson, the same guy that promoted her game. Or the Might Number 9 project banning kickstarter contributors from their forums after they pledged hundred of dollars to the project for the privileged.
Maybe if we call her a him, and change the name to Zack instead of Zoe, and say she was allegedly bribing a journalist instead of allegedly sleeping with him. The biggest issue I see here is people are getting so hung up on, "You're attacking a feminist for sleeping with people, ARRRARARA!!!!", Where if Zoe had been a guy using money instead of sex it'd be pretty clear he, AND the journalist, would be in the wrong.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:41PM
If that were true, there'd be no need to rely on propaganda or fallicies; examples of this alleged misbehaving is all thats needed. The only thing at the core of this whole "gamergate" thing is just some asshole trying to get back at his exgirlfriend for dumping him, and a bunch of other assholes helping him, making up shit as they go in order to assassinate this girl's character and career.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:19PM
White Knight detected!
Good for you, coming to slander those who would speak badly about another person and exercise their right to have a different opinion than you! They must all be rapists too right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:27PM
Labelling, ad hominem, demonizing the enemy, strawman, and lying all in two sentences! I think thats a record for the most amount of different fallacies and propaganda techniques used in the least amount of words!
Still waiting for that proof. Insults and logical fallacies only prove that it doesn't exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:57PM
Prove that these so called "assholes" made everything up. Your claim not mine, Shithead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:08PM
The Burden of Proof [yourlogicalfallacyis.com] lies with the ones making the claims that "she traded pussy for reviews"; if they cannot produce evidence to support those claims, then they are proving that they made it up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:31PM
if she hadn't got so upset about it, we wouldn't still be talking about it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:34PM
Then explain why someone sleeps with 5 journalists?
The funniest part though, is when you expect the "corrupt" journalist to honor their "pussy trade" agreement.
How does that logic follow?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:40PM
Your logical fallacy is: Red Herring [logicalfallacies.info]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:51PM
So your defense is that she's just a loose woman?
(Score: 2) by monster on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:57PM
Is there a fallacy about incorrectly claiming use of a fallacy? (Meta fallacy?)
Look, I don't know if that girl indeed traded sex for good reviews or not, but the number is not a red herring, it gives some credence to the claim that she did. Sort of like 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action'.
Now that I'm done about the logical part, you can continue.
Round two.hundred... Fight!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:40PM
Isn't this the creationist argument? You can't prove god doesn't exist so my Christian god is the one true god?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:45PM
Exactly. You can't prove something doesn't exist; the only proof is from the people making the claim failing to prove it. If they cannot prove it exists, then by default it does not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:53PM
http://thezoepost.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com]
All the pictures and proof you like.
You are one lazy SoB or did you sleep with her too?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:59PM
Why would anyone trust anything said about her by her disgruntled exboyfriend who's pissed about getting dumped?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @11:09PM
Why would anyone trust her?
He has pics, however.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @11:13PM
Going with the Red herring [logicalfallacies.info] again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @12:14AM
Same logic applies to your claim about not trusting him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:21AM
He's the one who has the burden of proof.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @12:11PM
He posted chat logs to back up his claims.
I don't know what kind of proof you require.
I doubt she taped herself fucking 5 journalists while holding a copy of today's paper.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:16PM
He has chatlogs, which prove she's a liar/slut.
Her game is proof that she's a horrible game dev.
She hasn't proven anything, something you have in common.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @11:12PM
FYI, others have backed up some "stories" of her misdeeds.
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s644c0 [twitlonger.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 07 2014, @01:30PM
Do you have some reason to believe his allegations may be wrong? The problem is that this guy would know where the skeletons are.
But I was thinking more the collusion between these journalists both among themselves and in cooperation with the businesses that they cover. For example, there's the previously mentioned number of "gaming is dying" articles that came out at the same time (with the propaganda intent of derailing discussion of gaming journalism ethics by abruptly targeting misogyny among gamers).
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday October 07 2014, @12:01AM
(First off, I apologise for the length of this post. There isn't a lot of discussion about how this "gamergate" thing is a good case study on narrative control by the media, and I think it's something worth mentioning. Unfortunately, that also requires filling in some points that are generally being omitted in these discussions, so that makes the post longer.)
The funniest part of the whole story is they somehow found some people gullible enough to not think "games journalism" or "journalism in general" is anything other than complimentary copy for the ads. Where do they find idiots like that anyway?
I think most people understood that was the case. It's been known for years (since the late '90s at least) that the gaming rags value their relationships with publishers because doing otherwise would jeopardise their "scoops". Recently, however, it's come out that there's more going on than even that.
I'm not involved in either side of this whole "SJW vs GamerGate" thing, but I've been following it out of curiosity. I find it interesting, because it's providing a real-time example of what happens when one side has control of the "narrative" that the public at large sees.
Prior to the "gamers are dead" thing, it was just a celebrity scandal type deal. Indie dev allegedly slept with people to garner favourable opinions and exposure, ex-boyfriend told a sad story and people jumped on it. If it'd stayed at that nothing would have happened, probably, but then came a slew of "gamers are dead!" articles.
All these "gamers are dead" op-ed style pieces were published within a ~24 hour period, all following the same basic narrative, across multiple (most?) gaming-oriented sites. Moderate or conflicting views were nonexistent. A few writers that did attempt to provide moderate views in contrast to the "gamers are dead" narrative found themselves punished in some way, though (allegedly) the reasons were unrelated to the posting.
The whole thing seemed kind of suspicious, even to an outsider like me; I saw a bunch of conveniently timed op-ed pieces on multiple sites and wondered about their timing and impetus. For the people actually involved, it further fueled suspicions of industry collusion, narrative control, and greater problems within the "game journalism" industry than originally believed.
Those suspicions bore fruit when the existence an industry-wide mailing list called "Game Journo Pros" was leaked by a list member to a non-gaming journalist. Game Journo Pros is a mailing list with ~150 members (a few dupes, so slightly fewer) ranging from editors, such as Ben Kuchera of Polygon and Greg Tito of Escapist, to writers for various gaming sites. (Including GamaSutra, the one mentioned in the summary here.)
In addition to listing members, the leaks provided email content indicating that certain members were discussing what sort of narrative they should take as a group when reporting on the gamergate thing. It also included a discussion on how to moderate and shut down community discussions on their respective sites. It started innocently enough, with Greg Tito asking for opinions and input about how to manage a discussion on Escapist about it, but some of the members (primarily Kuchera) got pretty forceful about it, demanding that Tito completely shut down the community discussion. Tito decided to leave the discussion open and only moderate problematic posts within it, and Kuchera started criticising Tito for not doing what he was basically ordered to by Kuchera and others.
Back to why I find this interesting: you don't see much discussion about this side of it at any of those gaming sites. Instead, the narrative is tightly focused on "misogyny" and harassment of an indie dev and some feminist youtuber that cherry-picks data points to make her arguments. If you only follow those sites, that's the only view you get: that there's nothing wrong, nothing going on, just some neckbeard woman-haters harassing a couple of poor downtrodden women and the journalists that defended them. Furthermore, you only see that view because the writers and editors discussed beforehand what sort of angle to take.
Plenty of talk about how the prominent non-GG side people get "doxxed" or harassed, but no mention of the GG-side people getting the same treatment. Some of those "journalists" have been quite vocal in harassing, too, but it gets glossed over. When the Destructoid founder told another journo to "BURN YOU FUCKING HACK" while also trying to shame and discredit him, it didn't make news the same way unverified statements on the "other side" did. Plenty of writing about the horrible motives behind GG people and how they're all "misogynists", painting everyone involved with a broad brush, but scarcely a mention of the more substantial problems that have come to light.
This is what happens when one side of a conflict has near-complete control of the narrative and discussion. That side gets reported favourably and the entire thing becomes skewed, and the general public gets handed a specific, distorted reality that glosses over other problems. Then that distorted perception becomes the only "truth" and you end up with things like Garrett's blog post, where anybody disagreeing with him gets their comments replaced with "fart fart fart" (very mature on his part, by the way).
Note: this isn't intended to be comprehensive. There's plenty of crap being slung by both sides, and I'm not personally involved with either side, so I'm not writing this to list every grievance (for either side). I just find it fascinating how one-sided the coverage has been and how that narrative control is affecting not just the story, but how people outside the general gaming circles are being influenced.
This has been a great example of why people should be skeptical of their news sources. If you aren't finding conflicting opinions and multiple sides of the same story, you're probably being fed bullshit, because you're probably being sold a narrative instead of given actual news.
(Score: 1) by Darth Turbogeek on Tuesday October 07 2014, @01:32AM
I've only seen a very very tiny bit about #Gamergate or whatever it is. I only skimmed this discussion and I now know 10 times more than I cared to.
To me, the whole thing is a small bunch of idiots who think their opinions matter yelling at a bunch of other idiots who think their opinions matter who are yelling back, while everyone else doesn't give a shit. The handful of Tumblr SJW's, #notmyshield (or whatever), the gaming "journalists" (and lets face it, it's not new gaming journalism is morally bankrupt, that was a discussion that was had 10 years ago and it's never gotten better), the people going on about gaming isnt dead..... well no one outside of their tiny circle gives a shit and will continue to not give a shit no matter how long this goes on for.
I suppose the only thing I have learned of note is how horribly broken and fucked up some of these "SJW's" really are and the rank hypocrisy of it all being displayed by both sides.
But fortunately I'll click submit and stop with the smallest amount of pretending I care about this stupid squabble because... well... at the end of the day it means nothing to me and thence this is the entirety of the fucks I'll give to this.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday October 07 2014, @11:33AM
Then I think you've missed the point. This is pouring over into the IT world now. Because of the narrative that's being spun IT, Software Developers, large corporations are all being sucked into a black hole. Anyone that doesn't follow the narrative is a misogynists and is being shamed into falling in line by people who are following the narrative.
As an example, Intel didn't pull their ads from Gamasutra because of the gamergate letter writing campaign. They pulled their ads because Gamasutra's toxic behaviour toward their readers as well as the editor and chief's racists, sexists behaviour none of which is written about. Then what happened? We started seeing stories, "Intel gives into #GamerGate Pressure", in which even the main stream media gets almost all the facts wrong, paints GamerGate as a misogynistic movement before "Poor Leigh Alexander is under attack from the big mean cis-white-men" and Intel is forced to issue an apology for doing WHAT MADE PERFECT SENSE.
Then GitHub and Linux Dev's start getting into it. No one's refusing to do their job because 'Gamers' are getting mistreated, being doxxed, sent syringes in the mail and getting fired because of malicious phone calls. They're refusing to do their jobs because the word misogyny is being thrown around to shame anyone that's not falling in line.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @06:40PM
> The Social Justice Warrior fad is certainly making me far LESS tolerant of other people, not more.
All protests piss off people, that's what happens when you challenge the status quo.
The trick is to rise above the annoyance and figure out what you think about the issues.
False balance is an impediment to that understanding.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @07:56PM
All protests piss off people, that's what happens when you challenge the status quo.
The trick is to rise above the annoyance and figure out what you think about the issues.
No the trick is to care about the really important issues whether people are protesting them or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:02PM
Yes. omniscience would be a great trick.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:09PM
If the priorities of humanity were not survival in this world but say getting to/achieving jannah/heaven/nirvana then different things become more important. Perhaps you need omniscience to figure out whether your priorities should really be getting to heaven or something else but in many cases working towards "heaven"/nirvana and the long term survival of the species does not have to be mutually exclusive or incompatible.
There are plenty of protests in the world. Many of them stupid and not worthy of rising "above the annoyance" and thinking about the issues they are protesting about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:25PM
There are plenty of protests in the world. Many of them stupid and not worthy of rising "above the annoyance" and thinking about the issues they are protesting about.
If you don't understand the issues you can't figure out if they are stupid. You can certainly declare them to be stupid for superficial reasons though. You seem to be advocating just that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Monday October 06 2014, @05:52PM
There's a difference between "equality" and "forced feminism". There's also just the idea of not being a misogynistic asshole, or better still, not being an asshole in general. Things seem to be betting pushed a little too far in the name of "correctness". I'm also getting quite sick of hearing the term "rape culture" directed at the general male population.
The whole thing seems to be over-reaction heaped upon over-reaction, right from the original editorial.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 06 2014, @07:23PM
First he says he'll no longer be vectoring patches from Nick Krause into the kernel ( https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/20/573 and thread ), and now this - what will the world come to?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday October 06 2014, @07:30PM
It's good that he recognizes there's a problem, but like pretty much everyone else (probably me as well), he's over-reacting and trying not to seem like the sort of people that *are* the problem. He's probably just a passionate person about his causes and interests and is not out for fame with this. To me, a person that's a Linux kernel dev in his spare time is very likely the sort of person to really be active about what they believe in, even if they head of in a slightly wrong direction on occasion.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 06 2014, @10:09PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @07:31PM
> Which probably makes you a rapist, or at least a rape apologist,
I'm not quite clear as to the point of your post, but I think it is to complain about exaggeration being used to unfairly silence an opposing viewpoint and if that is the case that makes the exaggeration in the first part of your sentence more than a little ironic.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 06 2014, @08:24PM
I could have quietened others with my moderation points (hence reading AC's at -1 presently, something I otherwise don't do), but so far the only moderation I've made is an upward one for someone with whom I was in vocal *disagreement* less than a week ago. There ain't no silencing going on.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:34PM
After I wrote that I thought you might zero in on the poor word choice instead of addressing my point. My bad. Please replace "silence" with "demonize." Thank you.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @09:15PM
Call someone a misogynists and see how quickly they shutup. There's really no defence for that, either you keep going because you don't care and everyone discounts what you have to say, or you shutup and fall in line (self censorship). Anyone that wants can really make a game or find people to help them do it. The SJW tactic is to shame those already making games into making them they way the SJW want them made. This is where the likes of Anita Sarkeesian comes in. Normally she wouldn't be given the time of day, her videos and criticism is based purely on cherry picked, often stolen, examples and opinion. She's given a huge amount of undue weight because 1) Feminists and 2) she gets harassed for her views.
This was a pretty interesting video of women in video games [youtube.com] that no one seems to remember when Anita starts spouting off about hookers in GTA or how terrible it is that Mario has to rescue Peach.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Monday October 06 2014, @09:46PM
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @10:02PM
And it doesn't even talk about a lot of other games.
This is the comment I saw posted on a CBC article [www.cbc.ca] where I first saw the video:
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @10:06PM
Sorry I meant the writer of Grey Matter, not Cognition. Although, it's the same person.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:19PM
That argument seems to be along the lines saying that because there is a buffy the vampire slayer that nothing is wrong with bella in twilight.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @10:48PM
The opposite of which is I don't like Bella therefore there should be no Buffy either.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @11:01PM
Truth is there is a middle ground, people don't have to be attacking games that have women. Or don't have them. Or have strong women. Or weak women. There are enough of all types to stop shaming artist, devs and gamers that like a certain type.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:28AM
> The opposite of which is I don't like Bella therefore there should be no Buffy either.
Uh, no. That seems to be a random word association that only has meaning within the confines of your head.
Bad things don't get a pass from criticism just because there are superficially similar good things in this world too.
(Score: 2) by velex on Monday October 06 2014, @11:48PM
Don't watch Twilight, then. I haven't, so I don't even know what character you're talking about.
I'll give you another example: Dr. Carol Marcus in Star Trek Into Fail. Granted the movie was a complete WTF, but nobody's forcing me to rewatch it.
Instead, I'm free to spend my time watching Xena. That's the great thing about being able to choose which media you consume.
Your argument seems to be that the beatings should continue as long as characters like Bella exist. I hope you're not arguing for censorship. Who gets to be the ultimate judge of which characters are demeaning to women? You? Well, sure, you are for yourself. I reiterate: don't watch Twilight. Also please refrain from blaming an entire, diverse demographic for this character's existence and what effects it may or may not have on another large, diverse demographic. There's a word for that. Here it is: sexism.
I don't know anything about this Bella character, but remember, women are individuals, too. I guarantee you that given enough time, I could find a population of women who believe Buffy should be censored and Bella promoted. We don't have to agree with them.
You're never going to live in a world free of stories of damsels in distress. I'm glad I live in a world that has Xena. I would like to be able to select a female avatar in Gran Turismo[1] like I can in Armored Core, so nothing's perfect. Never was able to get into Buffy.
([1]: I was finally able to locate the only female I believe exists in the Gran Turismo universe. Pass a license trial in GT V, then wait about 5 seconds. This does irritate me on one level, but I play the game to drive cars. The car is my avatar. I wonder if this has improved in GT VI?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:32AM
> Don't watch Twilight, then.
Don't pay attention to people who criticize characters in video games.
Social critics criticize parts of society, that's their function. If you don't like what they have to say, don't listen to them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Atatsu on Monday October 06 2014, @07:59PM
I'm also getting quite sick of hearing the term "rape culture" directed at the general male population.
I saw a nice analogy addressing this. Consider this:
When you're at the pool and some little kids run by and the lifeguard shouts "No running!", do you speak up and explain "But I wasn't running!". No. Even though the kids weren't addressed specifically, you know the instruction was directed at them. It's the same here.
(Score: 2) by velex on Monday October 06 2014, @08:27PM
It's a little different when you have been in situations where folks in positions of authority have intentionally and knowingly punished one for the actions of others.
To change the analogy, imagine you see someone running and you know that everyone that's in that same demographic who happens to be present will be punished for that one person's actions, and it's your demographic. Then they get caught, and you and everyone else in that demographic gets rounded up for an education about why running on the deck is bad.
The individual isn't punished, the group often is when it comes to matters like this. That gives the individual no incentive to change their behavior. In fact, maybe the jackass enjoys it every time a bunch of others get pulled aside for scolding whenever he breaks the rules.
The problem with the SJWs here is that if this continues to escalate, eventually it's going to pull me in. Will I be required to undergo "sensitivity training" or "sexual harassment training" before I'm allowed to fire up Civ IV if this gets too far out of hand before I can manage to legally change my gender?
I would be a lot more sympathetic to the SJWs here if I didn't need to worry about a sexist remedy being enacted. I can't control the actions of immature teenagers playing some crappy FPS game. All I can do is control the actions of one 30-something Civ fan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:32PM
The problem with the SJWs here is that if this continues to escalate, eventually it's going to pull me in. Will I be required to undergo "sensitivity training" or "sexual harassment training" before I'm allowed to fire up Civ IV if this gets too far out of hand before I can manage to legally change my gender?
If that's the risk you are worried about, you can sleep easy because nothing even remotely like that is going to happen.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday October 06 2014, @09:03PM
Not yet..
(Score: 2) by black6host on Monday October 06 2014, @11:22PM
Never in my youth (60's) would I have imagined all that has come to pass WRT the government getting all cozy with my personal details.
I know, they're not likely to care much about me but for how many others did their life change (think no fly list, etc,) And if they truly did want me they (insert favorite three letter agency of your choice here) would get me by breaking laws and then lying about it. Of course this would all be sealed by the courts in the name of national security.
And that's what we're dealing with today. Imagine a 5 year old's future..
I don't think we'll move to the point of requiring "sensitivity" testing. In one move. Changes are made by multiple moves and you'll find that you've ended up exactly where common sense would once have told you we'd never be.
(Score: 1) by velex on Monday October 06 2014, @10:42PM
I hope so.
Just sayin'. Been there before, don't ever intend to be there again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @11:23PM
> Been there before, don't ever intend to be there again.
What is that supposed to mean?
The best spin I can put on it is the equivalent of the person who was once in a car accident now refusing to ever ride in a car.
(Score: 2) by velex on Wednesday October 15 2014, @03:11AM
Something like that.
I grew up in a school system and then had the stupid mental retardation to attend a college that all had institutionally sexist policies. I was repeatadly assigned blame as "all men."
Now that I'm all growed [sic] up, especially when most strangers I meet believe correctly that I'm a woman, I have no intention of ever being held accountable for the actions of "all men," no matter in how stupid of a way. If I ever fire up Civ and have to take "sensitivity training" because the name on the credit card I used to purchase it is male, I believe I will cancel my Steam account and demand a refund. I may even use the advantage I have of being middle-aged and having resources to get a lawyer to see if I might stand to win a lawsuit or if I should just say "fuck it" and get The Pirate Bay edition.
Consider it like remembering to wear a seatbelt after being involved in an accident where somebody without a seatbelt was propelled through a window.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 06 2014, @08:15PM
First he says he'll no longer be vectoring patches from Nick Krause into the kernel ( https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/20/573 and thread ), and now this - what will the world come to?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @05:56PM
Despite being awful humans
This is some person telling me he doesnt care. Well good on him. However, they want me to care as well. Well I dont.
The more both 'sides' speak them more they look like prima-donas who want the world their way. Then are trying to generate up internet rage upon the other side.
The 'Streisand effect' is what they are trying to generate up. This is NOT a good thing. Even the original 'streisand effect' cause made both sides look like tools.
The more I read on this and the more things that happen I think 'what a bunch of tools'. I am forming an opinion but its not the one either 'side' wants me to have.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Random2 on Monday October 06 2014, @05:57PM
GamerGate isn't about misogyny, it's about Journalistic integrity. It was about concerns raised over a certain developer who appeared to have an intimate relationship with people reviewing that developer's work. It's been so thoroughly hijacked on an imagined narrative of misogyny that it's effectively pointless to talk about now; the 'discussion' jumps into 'you're being a misogynist bastard' faster than it can be corrected.
I do not support misogyny, or misandry, or racism, or any other form of arbitrarily discriminating against people based on genetic factors. I also think our journalists should be held to a certain standard of integrity, which is the point being completely missed because of how poisoned the well has become.
If only I registered 3 users earlier....
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gman003 on Monday October 06 2014, @06:39PM
The supposed relationships with journalists was fabricated. As in, completely made up. The journalist they originally accused her of sleeping with to get a better review did not even write a review for the game. From there it gets even more nonsensical, as they kept inventing new people that she slept with to try to keep it going. I'm pretty sure some of the people they listed by the end of it didn't even exist, but the internet is averse to fact-checking.
The ironic thing is that the only person she *did* sleep with was the person who kicked off the entire thing - the entire GamerGate thing literally started as an disgruntled ex-boyfriend using 4chan to get revenge. It grew from there - the MRA fuckers took up the banner and turned it into "bash all women", the anti-SJW crowd got involved - but the spark that started it all was some jealous prick trying to ruin some woman's life because she dumped him. And they all organized - actually organized - a campaign to do it for him, because people are generally shitty.
If you want to be concerned with journalistic integrity, I'd be with you. But it's not solo indie games that are paying for good reviews - it's the big AAA companies (remember the Kane and Lynch fiasco?). And it's definitely not someone who's giving the game away for free.
(Score: 2) by mth on Monday October 06 2014, @07:31PM
If you want to be concerned with journalistic integrity, I'd be with you. But it's not solo indie games that are paying for good reviews - it's the big AAA companies (remember the Kane and Lynch fiasco?). And it's definitely not someone who's giving the game away for free.
Also, it is primarily the journalist's job to keep a professional distance from the subject of their writing. If this is really about journalistic integrity, then why is so much attention focused on the developer?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:48PM
Because the developer is also a game journalist/commentator, and a self-righteous narcissist.
(Score: 2) by Random2 on Monday October 06 2014, @07:32PM
Yes, that is what this entire thing is suppose to be about. That's what we're suppose to be focusing on. Why are we even mentioning that particular developer and any relations that developer may have had with other people? It's not the issue at hand.
That's the same problem with the article that Gamasutra published. In it, the journalist defines the image of a "gamer" as a white male basement-dweller who blows all their money on getting 'the latest and greatest'. This is factually incorrect (See #NotYourShield). That may be a particular demographic within gaming, but white, male basement dwellers are by no means representative of all gamers.
She then correctly attacks that image as incorrect and under-representative of gaming.
But the problem is that she then confuses that (intentionally, as indicated by quotes like "Gamers are over. That's why they’re so mad." and "These straw man ‘game journalism ethics’ conversations people have been having") with the people who are actually trying to push for repercussions to issues like the Lynch fiasco. People were not angry because of the developers gender, they were angry because, based on what they knew at the time, it appeared that there was a serious breach of journalistic integrity about that developers game. Did everyone who was angry respond appropriately? No. But then the SJW and feminist crowd got involved, attacking the entire movement as misogyny, which isn't true and only made the people supporting the real issue angrier.
And the gamasutra article is another facet of that. She's muddying the waters and derailing the problem, which is where the anger comes from. Is it sufficient cause for Intel to pull advertising on gamasutra? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps she could have chosen less inflammatory remarks (such as "Gamers are over" which is intended to refer to the demographic she highlighted but is far too inclusive as the label she applied to that demographic does not actually belong to it).
All in all, there's no reason for misogyny to even be a part of this. It's devolved into a shitstorm of people incorrectly attacking people about misunderstandings (some intentional) over the real issues. There's no reason for the gaming community to be broken into 'sides' over this; what we should be doing is working together to attack the larger problem of journalistic integrity in gaming whenever and wherever it arises.
If only I registered 3 users earlier....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @07:51PM
> That's what we're suppose to be focusing on.
If that's the case then all anyone who believes as you do has to do is say nothing in response to those articles. They are, after all, microscopic in import being little more than yet another blog post. The only publicity they get is what people give them and if it weren't for all the vitriol aimed at these women the overwhelming majority of people who have heard about gamergate would never have heard about them and their views. It has really streisanded them into the public sphere with Time Magazine even publishing an article.
(Score: 2) by Random2 on Monday October 06 2014, @08:13PM
And that's exactly what I did; my first post was about cautioning against running this particular type of articles because it acts as flamebait and avoids the real issues (the second clarifying what the actual issue is). The Streisand effect isn't coming from the people trying to deal with journalistic integrity, it's coming from the SJWs and feminists who are making it about an imagined misogyny; pushing out articles like the ones on gamasutra or declaring that a specific set of people who chose to attack that developer are representative of everyone involved (which they are not).
Do the majority of SJWs and feminists care about this? Probably not. But the ones that do continue to attack the wrong people for the wrong reasons and blow things up further than if they'd simply stop or refocus to deal with the issues GamerGate is about.
If only I registered 3 users earlier....
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @09:01PM
Disclaimer, I'm pro-gamergate. I've been following it since the "Gamers are over" articles, which I did take personal offence to. Now you know I'm bias, but I consider myself well informed.
My observation is this is actually demonstrating how much power an irrelevant media, like game journalism, has. There's a lot going on here that people aren't hearing about. What the game media wants the public focused on is the harassment of Zoe, which can't really be linked to GamerGate other than "they say so", as far as I'm aware. She's in the public eye, on the internet, there be trolls here.
Here's the one minute short version of GamerGate [youtube.com]
The "article" Nathan wrote was actually posted on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, but it wasn't really a review. It was little more than an honourable mention, that's still favourable given the number of other indi games out there that didn't get any promotion.
On top of that, there's been little to no mention of how Zoe tanked the fine young capitalists (TFYC) project to get women into game development with proceeds going to charity. After Zoe doxxed and berated them, she sicked a legion of her followers on them, which resulted in their indi-go-go getting shutdown. Then she started her own "Game Jam", which Nathan promoted. Proceeds were funnelled into her personal paypal. I believe her Game Jam ended up failing. This was about the time #GamerGate came into the picture and helped raise $70,000 for TFYC to get their project funded. There was massive censorship over the whole thing, 4Chan banned discussion, Reddit mods started shadow banning (one such incident happened in an open discussion with Julian Assange). This is when things really started to heat up and 4Chan just about ripped itself apart.
As it turns out there was a GameJournoPro group that actually colluded to spin a narrative, and it seems to be working. Whenever ANYONE talks about GamerGate and journalistic ethics someone always jumps in and screams about it being about "muh soggy knees". It will be impossible to move forward on that. No mainstream is going to cover it for the same reason Soylent editors are sensitive about talking about it. You become either a misogynist or a white knight defending poor behaviour.
On the topic of Intel pulling ads. GamerGate wrote letters, but if you follow Leigh Alexander (Gamasutra's editor at large) on twitter at all she is a sexist racists bigot. Intel pulled their ads because of her extremely poor behaviour, GamerGate just brought it to Intel's attention.
IMHO, we need to get away from being afraid of being called misogynists and berated by SJW, which I use to mean an extremist faction of feminism. I have no problem with feminism, I have a problem with people using it as a platform to censor, shame and spread politically correct hate. Disagreeing with a women or feminist doesn't make you a misogynists, but misogyny is used to shut people up and prevent any and all discussion. Just look how it was applied to Intel, which had perfectly acceptable reasons to pull funding from Gamasutra. What happened? Intel apologized. That's the BS going on here, they should be free to support or not support whom ever they want, without fear of being called out and shamed by extremists.
If we aren't talking about what's *actually* going on, no one will and the only voice in the mess is going to be the journalists this is about in the first place.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:33PM
> And that's exactly what I did; my first post was about cautioning against running this particular type of articles because it acts as flamebait
That's really odd, because what I see in your first post is nothing but that. It is all "not misogyny" "not misogyny" "not misogyny" and "I'm not a misogynist." At best it is just throwing more logs on the fire you say you to want to put out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:43PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:25PM
There's clearly misogyny at play; what else would you call a large group of assholes working together to destroy this one guy's exgirlfriend's life because she dumped him? Why else would they care that this asshole got dumped, except for the fact that she's a woman?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:17PM
Misogyny exists, but is not what GamerGate is about. Were there some assholes who harassed Zoe? Yes. Do they represent GamerGate? No. #NotYourShield.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:33PM
"I don't like this game (thats made by a woman), but its getting good reviews. That slut must be trading pussy for those good reviews!" Pretty clear example of misogyny.
"Appearance of trading sexual favors for good reviews" is meaningless. Lets see some actual proof. If its actually happening, proof should be easy to obtain, but until then, its just a bunch of misogynistic assholes outraged over a woman's success.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:51PM
If you're going to choose to confuse the people who attacked with Zoe with the people trying to push for responsible journalism, no one's going to be able to convince you otherwise. No one's defending the people who attacked her, and the only people claiming that they're even involved with Gamergate are people trying to push it as misogyny, like yourself.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @09:54PM
Have you seen or played her game?
It's horrible and little more than a choose your own adventure novel. It failed on Steams green light. It passed on the second try after some controversy ZOE manufactured with Wizzardchan, a message board literally for depressed virgin males. There was also the fact that the journalist she allegedly slept with also promoted her Game Jam, after she berated and doxxed members of the fine young capitalist (TFYC) for their initiative to get women into gaming.
To be clear this isn't about Zoe, it's about Nathan, the journalist. Zoe is the alleged briber, Nathan is suppose to be the professional with standards.
What if this had been a guy that allegedly bribed Nathan to promote their terrible game and Game Jam after some shady dealings with TFYC? No one would be accusing those that speak out as misogynists. People defending Zoe because she's a women who couldn't possibly have done anything wrong are the ones that are sexists here.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:04PM
Everyone has different tastes. Visual novels are pretty big in Japan (a lot of them are eroge, but not all), and there is a niche market for them in the US. So this guy apparently likes visual novels, so what? Suggesting that the creator has anything to do with his review is a red herring, and that is where her exboyfriend comes in...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 06 2014, @08:37PM
Well, that settles it then. BTW, do you have any facts we can check?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:43PM
having looked closely at the numerous messages sent our way by concerned readers and, having compared published timelines, our leadership team finds no compelling evidence that any of that is true.
http://kotaku.com/in-recent-days-ive-been-asked-several-times-about-a-pos-1624707346 [kotaku.com]
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @09:30PM
You realize, "We're not guilty because we say so" isn't really fact. I don't really want to get into the ex-bf's blog post, but why is their word any more relevant than his in this case? I've read a lot of, "The ex-bf made stuff up to get revenge", but the only real dispute to the claim I've seen is, "because kotaku said he was lying". There are images of twitter conversations out there of Zoe admitting to most of what the guy says.
The issue here is this is why we can't make any progress on the issue. The members of the GameJournoPro [yiannopoulos.net] group conspired to spin this narrative. No one can move past the harassment they wanted people to argue about. Yeah, my tinfoil hat might be too tight.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:44PM
> The members of the GameJournoPro group conspired to spin this narrative.
That's really effing long and so terribly formatted. So I just skimmed it. What I got from it was even less of a smoking gun than the climategate emails. [skepticalscience.com] What you call "spin" seems to be talking about the issues they care about. That their take on the situation is different than your take is not a conspiracy, it's simply their perspective.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:02PM
Their perspective? You mean their best interest right? Cover up any scandle and redirect the anger to all those aweful sexists gamers that want to hold them accountable for their actions?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 07 2014, @01:32PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:14PM
If "fabricated" now means already admitted to sleeping with 5 of them herself via Twitter than I agree with you.
But if you want to defend her more... by all means continue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:42PM
Right, because Twitter accounts never get hacked. That could never, ever happen, especially when people have a lot to gain personally by doing so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:05PM
Because no one would sleep with 5 journalist to advance their career. That could never, ever happen, especially when people have a lot to gain personally by doing so.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @10:13PM
If her account was hacked then maybe she should say it was hacked. As it is she's still using it and never made a claim it was hacked or denied she corroborated the allegations. Maybe she should get on that... It's only been two months so I'm sure there's a possibility she doesn’t know she's admitted to it.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:36PM
So show me a post where she says she slept with somebody, and then a review written by that person dated immediately after the date she slept with him.
People are people, we have relationships with each other; sometimes people up hooking up with people they know from work; there's nothing wrong with that. If there is actual impropriety going on, I'd like to know, but from what I've seen the guy she supposedly fucked for a good review didn't even review her game.
So, lets see it. A review written by somebody she admitted to fucking within a week - or hell, make it a month - of fucking them.
(Score: 2) by keplr on Monday October 06 2014, @10:45PM
there's nothing wrong with that
Actually, there's a lot wrong with that if you handle it poorly. He needs to disclose their personal relationship if he ever writes about her, even a passing mention. The easier solution is to just not mention her or her games ever.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:57PM
The alleged review doesn't even exist, so that's covered pretty well. There's a review by Adam Smith, but I thought it was Nathan Grayson she was fucking for reviews?
(Score: 2) by keplr on Monday October 06 2014, @11:02PM
It's not a review. Stop moving the goalpost. It was a MENTION. That's bad enough.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @11:23PM
Ah, so he did mention her, I didn't see that. But wait, you're telling me that people are pissed off about her allegedly fucking some guy for a mere passing mention? That's even worse. Trading sex for a good review is impropriety for sure and would deserve some outrage if it was true, but a passing mention? Come on now, that's beyond childish.
(Score: 2) by keplr on Monday October 06 2014, @11:36PM
You're right, it would be a rather small thing to fixate on. That's why Gamergate isn't about that, or about her. The pro-GG side has moved on from talking about it. We don't care. Look who keeps bringing it up. It's the people who don't want to have a discussion about the direction the industry has been moving. It's the people who want to hijack gaming to serve a political agenda.
I urge you to watch this video. [youtube.com] This whole thing is much bigger than the simple story they're making it out to be. I bet you've never heard of DiGRA, but it's what everyone should be talking about.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @11:54PM
So, that's not a massive moving of the goalposts, at all. But I'll give it to you nonetheless. The whole complaint in that video is over a deluge of editorials claiming the word "gamer" is outmoded. I am not impressed. Its about one step above complaining that the same stories are submitted here and on slashdot. Is that really the most damning complaint here?
(Score: 2) by keplr on Monday October 06 2014, @11:59PM
So inspiration to write an article like that just independently struck a dozen people, with no connection between them, all at once, on the same day? Do you expect me to believe that? This wasn't one story being reposted, or one starting a chain reaction. They all came out with the same message at the same time. There's a political agenda, an entire movement, behind it.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @12:06AM
So inspiration to write an article like that just independently struck a dozen people, with no connection between them, all at once, on the same day?
Of course not, reading through some of the stories they are all rooted in the quinn / sarkessian stuff that had been going on for months. It is not particularly surprising that the authors all talked to similar sources and so their stories shared common themes. But even if it were a big-ole conspiracy, so what? An "entire movement" to redefine a word? Big deal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @12:27AM
I agree, so fucking what? If anything, it looks like this, "Oh noes! We might lose our label in the media (who fucking cares what they think though)" is just a smokescreen to distract from the extreme abusiveness and misogyny coming from these fucktards. As far as I can see, that is the real problem here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @12:06AM
So in other words, its about a bunch of self-centered shitheads throwing a temper tantrum. Just like the whole systemd retardation.
I don't give a fuck if the "gamer identity" or "gamer label" is gone, I'm going to continue playing video games. I don't need some stupid label to enjoy my games.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @11:31PM
Wait, I'm sorry, its not even a mention, its a fucking list of games Greenlighted by Steam. The game was greenlighted, so he HAD to mention it. Seriously, THAT is what people are pissed about, that it was greenlighted by Steam and he included it on a list of other games greenlighted at the same time?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @11:03PM
Since when is pussy a binding contract? So maybe he didn't reciprocate.
God knows how you could write anything positive about that turd she produced.
Still doesn't change what she did and why she did it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @06:44PM
The reason it is important for this story to be repeated is the same journalistic integrity you seem to be invoking. This story and the myriad others of similar odour orbiting this behemoth can, as you have so correctly pointed out, be seen as flamebait.
To shy away from reporting what many of us in 'games' and 'IT' industries consider to be a very important issue would be to leave little or nothing but the 'SJW' reporting on these matters.
It is my opinion that the 'fire' represented by these collected attacks on the 'gaming' comunity cannot be quenched with a bucket of water nor suffocated by lack of oxygen. We cannot simply drown them out because 'they' are very organised and ignoring them will not make them go away because 'they' seem happy enough to generate their own trolls with sock puppet accounts and even flat out lying.
It is for these reasons that I believe journalistic intergrity demands that stories of this type be covered by both sides, and even those not involved to ensure that the truth is known.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @06:53PM
> GamerGate isn't about misogyny, it's about Journalistic integrity.
It is about an 800lb gorilla of misogyny hiding behind a spider-monkey of journalistic integrity.
It all started when an angry ex expressed his pain of losing a girlfriend in a really nasty blog post [wordpress.com] that made a bunch of wild allegations. The truth was basically a non-event, [boingboing.net] but it provided a superficially legitimate hook for the misogynists to hang their juvenile rage on.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Monday October 06 2014, @09:42PM
GamerGate isn't about misogyny, it's about Journalistic integrity.
No, it's about misogyny. The allegation that a journalist wrote a favourable review after a female developer slept with him is false. Untrue. Made up. The article doesn't exist, no-one can find it or provide a link. Some people just got upset because they don't like girls being part of gaming, especially when they complain about the way they are treated, so they took a blog post written by her ex and expanded the myth from there. It gets endlessly repeated but it all originates from this lie.
There is a problem with journalistic integrity in gaming, but it's due to the big publishers bribing reviewers. GamerGate is just an attack on women who are making valid complaints which some guys take personally.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @10:18PM
Rock, Paper, Shotgun [archive.today]
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by keplr on Monday October 06 2014, @10:48PM
Good on you for spreading the word. The problem is, GP probably knows the truth already. Think about it like this. It takes a few seconds to start a fire which takes hours to put out. They go around setting fires and we chase after them trying to set things right. That's a losing game. The firebugs will win if you play like that.
They can tell ten lies before you're done refuting the first one.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:55PM
I thought that Nathan guy was the one she's supposed to have fucked for a good review, so what does Adam's review have to do with anything?
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @11:14PM
It says right at the top "By Nathan Grayson on January 8th, 2014."
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @11:29PM
And he did not review her game, its just a list of games that Steam greenlighted. So what? Where's this review that she supposedly fucked for?
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday October 07 2014, @12:09PM
Well we're making progress. We've gone from, "It doesn't exists", to "It exists, but it wasn't Nathan that wrote it", to "Ok, it exists and Ok, Nathan did write it, but it's just a mention in a list of mentions". It's still a promotion of the game, which after reading through all the comments here is all I've ever claimed.
On top of that he also promoted Zoe's Game Jam [kotaku.com], shortly promoting her game. After she doxxed and berated a similar idea from The Fine Young Capitalistic (TFYC), which she was indirectly involved, in several ways, in having shut down on indi-go-go. Her game jam failed, #GamerGate helped raise $70,000 for TFYC after they moved their project to kickstarter. Wow helping to raise $70,000 to get women into game development! Those #GamerGate'rs are so misogynistic.
Oddly enough Know your meme [knowyourmeme.com] has one of the best repository of information on this entire debacle.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday October 07 2014, @12:20PM
Corrected link: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/08/admission-quest-valve-greenlights-50-more-games/#more-183169 [rockpapershotgun.com]
That's not a review, it's a list of indie games. They claimed there was a review, but there isn't. There is a list with a screenshot of Depression Quest, in alphabetical order, with a summary at the time. It mentions that game and two others.
Face it, some moron spun this into a tail, where there isn't one.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday October 07 2014, @12:54PM
You probably just missed this comment [soylentnews.org]
I was building to an attempted reader "self realization" that it's actually more than a mention in a review. The mention of depression quest was in January, the promotion of Zoe's Game Jam was at the end of March. Both the mention of her game and the promotion of Game Jam were done by Nathan Grayson around the time Zoe was allegedly bribing him. Beyond that, this moved way past alleged misconduct when the "Gamers are dead" articles were posted and The Game Journo Pro list showing the collusion was posted.
Nathan's misconduct was just one of a few events that took place in sparking questions about game journalists. Because of the way the game media has decided to cover it everyone thinks it's about the harassment of Zoe. Zoe and Nathan are just one tiny piece of what lead to where the movement is today, but all people want to talk about is Zoe and how GamerGate has always been about her harassment, which is a genetic fallacy.
As others have pointed out, Zoe is key to stalling any action and/or results GamerGate might achieve until the movement dies out and things go back to business as usual. Hopeful when it does die off, I think before December, the journalists will be a lot more "sensitive" to their readers, and I'm not talking about just game journalists. This is a wake up call for everyone in the media and what could happen on a much smaller scale than if it was found out CNN, NBC, CBC, BBC, Fox, etc. were colluding and misconduct was discovered.
I'm of the opinion in the long run GamerGate is going to lose, but what comes out of it will be a win for everyone.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:36PM
So in summary you have a review that isn't a review, it's just an alphabetical list, and an article about a game jam she was involved with. By a guy she is alleged to have slept with, but we don't really know.
Listening to the Gaters you'd think these claims were rock solid, undeniable facts that had been established beyond any doubt. Turns out it's all just innuendo and bullshit repeated until it becomes a meme. TFYC didn't exactly improve their credibility by getting 4chan involved in a game jam for women, which seemed to have issues right from the start anyway.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:56PM
4Chan didn't get involved until after the indi-go-go was shut down. I won't ague with you beyond this because it's pretty clear you're purposely ignoring the events and anything I provide you will be dismissed or down played.
I've already said I'm pro-gamergate, I'm making no claims or pretended I'm trying to cover up the fact that my opinion might be bias. It's obvious to me the gamergate side is for the side that is truly for inclusion and standing up for something even though it's a losing battle that can't be won. People on both sides are being hurt, instances on one side aren't being reported.
I'll leave this with you and hope it's take under consideration for what is taking place [youtube.com], I'm sorry it's length and slow.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:49PM
> GamerGate isn't about misogyny, it's about Journalistic integrity.
Can you give a gamergate-specific example where this critique of journalist integrity does not rely on accusing a woman of selling sex to someone in order to compromise their integrity?
One good solid example should clear this all up.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @11:20PM
Whet does selling sex for positive reviews have to do with hating women? If it was money instead of sex it would be bribery. Calling it misogyny is just to shutdown discussion.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @11:29PM
Your response appears to be tacit admission that there are no such examples. I am asking again just so that the offer is not forgotten.
With all of the payola in video-game reporting the decision to focus purely on the purported sexual hijnks of one woman for what is also purported to be the most minor of promotions is what makes it misogynist.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 08 2014, @04:08PM
That assertion would appear to demand /mens rea/. I've read or watched all the links that have been posted, and whilst is seems unassailable that sexual shenanighans took place, and that at least one of those people was to mention her in something he wrote on the internet, I still haven't seen any *deliberately* doing the former *in order to get* the latter. I definititely wouldn't use the above 5 words to describe what is unassailably known to be true.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Wednesday October 08 2014, @09:42PM
I'm not actually claiming the allegations against Zoe are true, I don't particularly care either way. What got me involved was the "Gamers are Dead" articles that claimed all gamers were cis-white-male misogynists because a few trolls did apparently care about what Zoe did or did not do.
My response was to "Can you give a gamergate-specific example where this critique of journalist integrity does not rely on accusing a woman of selling sex to someone in order to compromise their integrity?"
I don't understand what a woman or sex has to do with it. A person could give a journalists money, access to free games or free ride to Mars and back. In this case the allegation was she traded sex, but for some reason because it involves a woman and sex no ones allowed to call out ethics. How does that make sense?
If it wasn't true, fine say it wasn't true. Instead people were blocked from commenting and journalist colluded to cover it up and spin a narrative that dragged anyone and everyone that plays games through the mud. So now it doesn't matter how it got started, all that matters is we can't let these journalists get away with poor ethical practices, slander, collusion and censorship of an entire demographic. I least I'm not going to.
There's also the issue surrounding the fine young capitalists, the rigging of the IGF competition, and the extremely poor behaviour of journalists both on and off of media sites.
Then if you want to throw the "SJW" thing other people are talking about, which is a minor secondary concern of mine. That involves M00t banning GamerGate on 4Chan, Reddit shadow banning and deleting threads related to GamerGate, the community manager of the Might Number 9 project banning people for talking about GamerGate, The Linux dev not supporting Intel fixes and the GitHub developer disabling the GamerGate repository. These are cases where people are using their personal ideologies to influence and affect people in professional or real world spaces because, misogyny.
People want this to be about "a woman" and "her sex life", which prevents anyone from moving forward on other issues. There are thousands of pro-gamergate people in the twitter hash at any time and just about every one of us is constantly busy in discussions trying to determine if people are tolls or just misinformed about what we're trying to do. The only side that's getting broadcast at the moment is the "harassment of a woman" narrative. I'd say half the time someone shows up screaming at us about harassing women it doesn't take too long to prove otherwise and turn them over. The other half the time it's a troll that's just there to argue or bait a pro-GamerGater into losing their cool.
It's pretty exhausting, but it's something I care about.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday October 09 2014, @07:59PM
Just as I was composing my earlier message, I was saying very much the same as you've just written, to my g/f - even to the extent of persuading myself that the female/cuddles/extras aspect was probably *less* corrupt than the more financially-valuable treats that no doubt get passed around.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Friday October 10 2014, @11:19AM
Pretty much. We are actually making head way now. There are two articles out now that I've read where the journalist seems to be pushing what is ACTUALLY happening.
#GamerGate Is Not A Hate Group, It's A Consumer Movement [forbes.com]
The Gender Games: Sex, Lies, and Videogames [realclearpolitics.com]
I think this a turning point. Now that the GamerGate side is getting more coverage the game media isn't going to be the only megaphone on the stage. The won't be able to control the narrative and influence as many people. Now if only we could agree on what we want. I'm personally for all publications that printed "Gamers are dead" articles should have to print prominent apologies admitting what the journalist involved did was wrong and I also want the worst offenders fired.
Read it somewhere else, but "If I colluded with my competition to push specific sub-par vendors onto my clients. Then told my clients to STFU when some complained. Then colluded with the competition to slander and put the complaining clients out of business, I'd be fired. I'd actually probably end up in jail."
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @10:35AM
If you think this is the worst threat to the integrity of game journalism, you should probably prepare for a shock or few.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @05:58PM
I'm not a gamer and am only vaguely aware of the fact that AS and ZQ are professional "oppressed feminists" who bring this crap on themselves and make careers from crying "misogyny". This developer clearly doesn't give a fuck about that either.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 06 2014, @08:31PM
If he didn't give a fuck about the social issue, he would still be contributing to the project. That he is stopping seems to indicate pretty clearly that he does in fact care.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by Horse With Stripes on Monday October 06 2014, @06:06PM
Let me get this straight:
- someone posted something on a blog that others didn't like or agree with, but it was the poster's right to post it.
- the people who didn't like the post got Intel to withdraw their advertising from the site with the blog, which is Intel's right.
- some volunteer kernel maintainer took a position that he's not going to update Intel stuff in the kernel because they pulled their ads, which is his right.
- some dude named Jake - a GitHub employee - disabled or deleted the GitHub repository of documents for the people who got Intel to pull their advertising, which doesn't seem to be within Jake's rights as an employee at GitHub.
So there's a lot of people who were pissed at each other over a post, some pulled ads and a deleted repository ... and all because "gamers are over" (or some such nonsense)?
I think it's time to start reading the regular news again because this shit is for the birds.
(Score: 3, Informative) by arashi no garou on Monday October 06 2014, @06:27PM
- someone posted something on a blog that others didn't like or agree with, but it was the poster's right to post it.
I have to nitpick this one thing. On the internet, no one has any "right" to post anything. You have the privilege to post, and the moderators or owners of the forum of your choice have the right to delete or edit what you say, as it is their site. Gamasutra (and other sites including this one) are not government-run and are not subject to the US Constitution regarding freedom of speech.
That being said, I think this whole thing stinks. You have misogynistic gamers, and you have so-called "social justice warriors" who are not seeking justice, rather attention and fame. Then you have a company like Intel, who doesn't want to have a thing to do with the entire argument, yet when they try to distance themselves from the conflict they are accused of misogyny themselves. I'm sorry, but if someone tries to tell me that I'm anti-female because I don't want to be associated with either side of a feminist/misogynist argument, I'll probably die of laughter. It's a no-win situation for any entity that wants to have nothing to do with the situation. If Intel had kept their ads up, they would have been called out by the misogynist gamers for being "against them". If they pull their ads, which they did, they are called misogynist by the SJWs. I for one applaud them for backing out of a situation no one wants to be in.
As for the kernel hacker, again I'm calling it as a cry for attention. Yes, the vilification that Zoe Quinn and other female gamers/devs/bloggers have gone through is unwarranted, and even despicable in some cases, but there are better ways to fight it than trying to publicly shame a company that wanted nothing to do with the whole thing in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @07:11PM
Nobody has the right to censor me!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 06 2014, @08:21PM
I would much rather they redact what I say than edit what I posted to make me say something else.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Monday October 06 2014, @11:06PM
I never said it was a good thing, and I certainly would leave any site that felt they needed to edit their users' words. But the point is, it's their site, not yours. You agree to their terms when you post there. If you don't agree, find another forum you do agree with. It's one of the reasons I like sites such as Soylent News; community moderation ensures that you can be heard, even if what you have to say is unpopular. And if people don't want to hear you, they just browse at a higher threshold.
To put it another way, you can talk all you want but no one has to listen if they don't want to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @07:23PM
> you have so-called "social justice warriors" who are not seeking justice, rather attention and fame.
I find this accusation oddly familiar, it sounds just like what some people like to say about assange, snowden and occasionally greenwald and poitras.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:17PM
Its one [wikipedia.org] of many propaganda techniques [wikipedia.org] As soon as somebody starts using propaganda techniques, they're admitting they can't defend their premise properly.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 06 2014, @08:24PM
I have yet to meet someone who isn't a Slashdot reader who has any idea what is going on with Snowden or Assange. People who have a vague-to-nonexistent knowledge of the actual circumstances casually calling them traitors tends to rile me up.
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 06 2014, @10:43PM
Isn't this sexist?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Monday October 06 2014, @11:11PM
I say this because the typical SJW will see something completely innocuous, and try to spin it into something racist, sexist, or otherwise not up to their imaginary and completely arbitrary standards, and proceed to bully, harass, and even attempt to harm the subject of their fake ire. I'm not saying the GamerGate saga is innocuous; indeed, I'm on the side of the women involved. I think Zoe Quinn got a raw deal and received horrible treatment over daring to be an outspoken female gamer/developer. But that doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of the SJWs "on the case" are just doing it for attention, to feed their own overblown egos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:26PM
> If Intel had kept their ads up, they would have been called out by the misogynist gamers for being "against them".
What a terrible fate, being called out for being against misogynist gamers could really ruin a company's reputation.
It's a good thing corporations only have values when it suits them. [cnn.com] We wouldn't want them to actually stand behind those values when someone doesn't like the implications.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Monday October 06 2014, @08:45PM
I have to nitpick this one thing. On the internet, no one has any "right" to post anything. You have the privilege to post, and the moderators or owners of the forum of your choice have the right to delete or edit what you say, as it is their site. Gamasutra (and other sites including this one) are not government-run and are not subject to the US Constitution regarding freedom of speech.
I have to nitpick your nitpick. It was an editorial by an editor of the site. And even though I don't agree with her she absolutely has the right to post it on Gamasutra, her own personal blog, or anywhere else that will let her. If the site owners, editors, moderators, hall monitors or crossing guards delete it that's their right.
On the internet, no one has any "right" to post anything.
Set up your own site/blog/whatever and then tell me that you don't the right to post there. Am I being ridiculously pedantic? Sure I am, and so are you.
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Monday October 06 2014, @10:58PM
Fair enough. I just get so sick of (American) people claiming their First Amendment rights were violated when someone moderates their comments, or even suggests that they talk like a grown human being instead of an uneducated petulant child. The internet isn't owned or controlled by any government, no matter how much the US government would like to own and control it; "rights" don't enter into it. I maintain my position that the site owner can dictate who has the privilege to comment on there, therefore it isn't a right codified in any law book.
And just to be clear: I'm an American citizen.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Tuesday October 07 2014, @02:32PM
You are correct. Which is why the move away from usenet is a much bigger tragedy than most people will ever comprehend.
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:14PM
Thankfully Usenet hasn't been completely abandoned. I still hang out on alt.os.linux.slackware and a few other OS related groups that are fairly active.
But yeah, pretty much.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday October 06 2014, @06:29PM
Well hey, people seem to frequently complain about the news here not being nerdy enough. This has games, processor manufacturers, Linux developers, GitHub, and more. This is most definitely Nerdy. Sad and pathetic, but definitely nerdy.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Monday October 06 2014, @08:46PM
Touché
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 06 2014, @10:48PM
I beg to disagree: it is not nerdy, it is dorky [laughingsquid.com]: obsession and social ineptitude is there, but the intelligence ingredient is absent in high amount.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday October 06 2014, @06:35PM
- Pompous people in power form various stances and alliances
- Someone shoot some duke
- A blockade is put in force
- Ships and other stuff is lost
Hmm.. this seem so familiar ..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:07PM
Feminists got my free software projects deleted from hosting some years ago too.
They need to be hurt somehow.
(Score: 1) by Horse With Stripes on Monday October 06 2014, @08:47PM
They need to be hurt somehow.
Charm 'em with your small talk. I'm sure they'll feel the pain.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday October 06 2014, @09:15PM
How do you know it was a feminist agenda? and what kind of software are we discussing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @02:04AM
A free software text based casino game with coloured ascii art graphics.
Because they said so (it was the "geek feminists" who got it gone, they didn't want it "in their neighborhood" and they had a friend at the host)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by metamonkey on Monday October 06 2014, @06:14PM
What the hell does that even mean? I play video games. I'm not mad. I have more options to play more games than I've ever had. 10-year-old me would be insanely jealous of 36-year-old me. Who's mad, and why should anyone care who is or isn't mad?
Okay, I am a little mad about microtransactions. That shit can fuck off and die. But besides that I'm pretty happy.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @06:22PM
What about always online, even for single player games?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 06 2014, @06:29PM
What about always online, even for single player games?
I agree with OP, as OP says that shit can fuck off and die. But we have torrents of cracked games to fix that bug.
Another thing I don't like is buggy partial games "Oh sure it's only 2 hours long but we'll be selling some nice expensive DLC maps real soon now".
And I don't like celebrity voices or celebrity endorsements. Your game would suck less if you spent that $2 per copy on Q/A or R+D or pretty much anything else, even marketing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @06:37PM
The industry certainly has come up with new ways to make people who play games mad, but none of them have to do with "gamers [being] over", whatever that even means.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:37PM
It was written to cause anger, and stir up a bit of drama.
The real goal was to create a villain for the SJWs to stand against.
1) Piss off a group called gamers
2) ???
3) Profit
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 06 2014, @06:26PM
Its the journalist slime who are all foot-stompy about their idea of turning gaming into something like hollywood sequel releases where "everyone" only plays one stupid sequel of some FPS that was tired a decade ago.
And the only gamers they can find who are dumb enough to not already know that all game journalism is pandering complimentary copy are teen boys, who have never been known for excellent judgment WRT chicks, or really, WRT anything at all, but are easily manipulated via semi-comical sex images in advertisements.
Profit maximization and all that.
I suspect the vast majority of gamers and even the more gullible teen boy gamers simply don't care.
I strongly suspect there is also a side dish of "they aren't reading our cruddy websites because everyone knows we are useless touts, lets promote some fake BS to get some attention and some clicks thus some ad revenue".
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday October 06 2014, @06:40PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:44PM
Ummm, no, it was a flamebait propaganda tactic. Name calling is the sign of a truely righteous cause right? They pulled a "You mad bro?"
"Gamer" is an industry term, and culturally it's on par with any other hobby people enjoy.
I don't think many game studios care that your mom plays candy crush. Nor do I think she would call herself a "Gamer".
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday October 06 2014, @07:23PM
10-year-old me would be insanely jealous of 36-year-old me
I don't know, playing Tapper, or Daley Thompson's Decathlon, just isn't possible any more. There was a lot to say about copying a game out of a magazine too, writing in things line by line, and having to debug it, before you could play.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday October 06 2014, @09:19PM
It meant there was a skill level you had to reach to even get started. Perhaps we need something similar now?
Write your own bootloader using ROI or so ;)
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday October 06 2014, @09:56PM
Yeah, now we've got qwop
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @07:32PM
Sorry if you don't get it, but gamers are over. All your base are belong to us.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Monday October 06 2014, @08:55PM
Well, I don't have the full context because I am disinterested in burrowing through the muck to get to the original offending blog post, but I can venture a good guess as to what it means.
"Gamer" here is a label, an an inaccurate one, for a certain subset of the gaming community, that is also a subset of the Soylent community, that is also a subset of the IT professional community, that is also a subset of the global Internet community. That subset is what we call neckbeard, basement dweller, and similar epithets. The relevant stereotype is that they're white, male, single, heterosexual, and verbally aggressive/abusive. It's the abusiveness and masculinity that are the relevant traits. The other connotations are just prejudice.
For historical reasons, the abusive males had a strong presence online and therefore in the gaming community.
Today the abusive males are a tiny sliver of the whole gaming community. They know it, but they refuse to grow up and act like adults online. They are trying very hard to keep "their" internet and "their" community for themselves by defending it against invaders. Mainly, this involves being deliberately offensive in both generalized ways (frequent casual profanity, other forms of belligerence) and through specific, targeted bigotry and harassment.
My lack of patience for that type of person is the reason why Soylent is the only community where I actively participate.
Because the abusive males are a tiny minority of gamers -- not that they've gone away, but millions more and better people have entered the hobby -- there is no longer any financial incentive to pander to them, or tolerate them. So games are starting to change to appeal to a more diverse audience, and Duke Nuke 'Em Forever is a relic not likely to be repeated.
That, to me, is what "gamers are over" is supposed to mean.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:50PM
Well you certainly drank the koolaide. Abusive males this, abusive males that. How aweful for you.
Well you just keep up the good work Mr White Knight, your slut princess needs you to defend her honor.
I just don't understand why she didn't sleep with someone with game development talent. Her "game" is horrible. No wonder the journalists she slept with didn't say much about it.
(Score: 2) by Random2 on Monday October 06 2014, @10:02PM
Your description about her title and definition are correct. The controversy partly comes from using the label 'gamer', which applies to more than the stereotype she described (as noted), and confusing 'gamers' with the people involved in GamerGate. She also made the article fairly inflammatory in certain parts.
If only I registered 3 users earlier....
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Tuesday October 07 2014, @02:27AM
Oh, hell yes, I totally agree that her applying the word "gamer" as a blanket synonym for "toxic misogynist bigot" is offensive, unfair, and deserves a cogent and strongly-worded rebuttal.
I also think the gamer community has tolerated, sheltered, and defended the toxic misogynist bigots for far too long. The fact that she's also a bigot is a serious problem with the messenger, but it doesn't logically imply that misogyny is minimal in either the gaming community or the gaming industry.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by velex on Monday October 06 2014, @11:21PM
That makes a good amount of sense.
What keeps getting me trolled about the whole thing is that it's not immediately clear what demographic the term "gamer" refers to. Am I a gamer because I put in Gran Turismo or Armored Core every now and then? What if I admit to wasting whole weekends on marathon-length Civ games or logging on to Diablo III (*ducks*) when I'm bored and don't feel like reading some good sci-fi? Will I be a gamer when Star Citizen comes out and I build a gaming rig for the first time in about 15 years?
If I am a gamer, do I need to fear retaliation for what these immature teenagers are doing? Do I need to be self-conscious about my legal gender when I'm playing games?
tl;dr I think they should consider using a different term. I guess I'll continue to be trolled by the issue because of stupid (and probably unenforceable) policy proposals such as requiring one's avatar to match one's legal gender that have come up in the past (Microsoft iirc).
(Score: 1) by gumpish on Monday October 06 2014, @06:58PM
Having utterly failed to re-educate the content creators and consumers of any other entertainment medium, I wonder why the SJWs have such a hard-on for video games.
To their credit, they certainly are getting a lot of white knight support - though any perceived preponderance of support within the industry is probably an illusion since the relevant media outlets are only promoting anti-GG views.
Anyone interested in what I presume will be a critical view of the SJW vs. gamers phenomenon should consider tossing a few bucks to the patreon account of the people making "The Sarkeesian Effect".
http://www.patreon.com/thesarkeesianeffect [patreon.com]
(Score: 2) by skullz on Monday October 06 2014, @06:59PM
I'm sorry but who actually reads "game journalism" these days? Used to be you read the glossy mags to find out about all the cool things that you could play if you spent an arm and a leg on updating your rig but with the internet, twitch, youtube, that has gone away. And even back then you knew the "journalists" were lying through their teeth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:38PM
GamaSutra is more of an industry outlet. The target audience is developers, rather than gamers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 17 2014, @04:44AM
Not really, gaming enthusiasts reading it is what pulls in all the extra page views, and that's why companies like intel used to bother advertising on it
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday October 06 2014, @07:00PM
What are these Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn persons?
Take it from the beginning..
The whole story seems like a nest of wiring where you can't find the beginning or the end. And even the connections in between seems hard to find.
If I wanna do 3D graphics programming, why does this affair make any difference?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @07:16PM
Well, if that 3D programming becomes a game, and you try to enter it into the indie gaming competitions, you'll have a bit of an issue...
Another part of the #gamergate story is corruption/racketeering at IGF, of which the primary actors of the original scandal were beneficiaries of.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday October 06 2014, @08:52PM
So in essence if I program in 3D and then choose game as the application and it's about driving cars really fast. Then people with feminist agenda in the jury will make sure it never wins. While some poorly done game with doll house theme will win?
(exaggerating slightly to get to the point)
It also means that if I don't give a shit about competitions then it won't matter sans death threats etc..?
The only outcome really seems to be that Intel that actually made an (asfaik) effort to publish hardware API and make open source drivers will become hard to find drivers for. Instead we will be stuck with poorly done ATI/AMD stuff or proprietary lords of NVidia. If so then it's a good sign that this conflict is out of proportions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @07:19PM
Apparently it all started become some asshole exboyfriend of Zoe Quinn got shitty because she dumped him and started doing every scuzzbag thing he possibly could to assassinate her character and career.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:41PM
...Apart from the fact that none of the "allegations" have been proven false and it's evolved into shining a light into the shithole called "Gaming Journalism"
The only person assassinating Zoe Quinn's character is Zoe Quinn herself. She's been shown up to be a grade A bullshit artist and a massive hypocrite who plays the troll game just as hard as the trolls are accused. Oh and what about her deliberate efforts to fuck over a group of gaming women programmers so as she could get the money herself?
Oooooh no, Quinn isnt worth white knighting fellow AC. She's every bit as much a terrible person as anyone else involved in this nonsense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:50PM
Your logical fallacy is: Burden of Proof! [yourlogicalfallacyis.com]
The burden of proof lies with someone who is making a claim, and is not upon anyone else to disprove. The inability, or disinclination, to disprove a claim does not render that claim valid, nor give it any credence whatsoever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:16PM
There has been proof all over the net for the past few months. Your inability to find/read and/or believe it is not my problem. Nor is the lack of your critical thinking skills, I'd sue the school system for producing such a failure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @07:20PM
> What are these Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn persons?
Social critics who happen to focus on video games. Their criticism wounded a lot of fragile egos and since the internet gives everyone a megaphone and makes it easy for birds of a feather to flock together those fragile egos made their wounding into a big thing. It seems ironic to me because, as someone who hasn't played a video game for 20 years, I never would have heard of those women and their critiques of the industry if it weren't for all the squawking of their haters. For the most part I find their criticism dry and tedious because it is pretty clinical but also right on the money. Although it seems like recently they've decided to liven it up by deliberately tweaking the noses of the people with fragile egos. I can understand that, when someone is raging so hard that you can practically see the spittle flying from their words, it is really tempting to provoke them into even greater fits apoplexy just to see how far they'll go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:23PM
They needed to create controversy to stay relevant. Like Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccine agenda.
In order to be a hero they had to manufacture a villain. These two women couldn't give less of a shit about feminism, they only care about themselves. Most every SJW is the same, otherwise they'd be actual social workers instead oft publicity seeking narcissists.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Monday October 06 2014, @07:25PM
I just don't get this whole controversy. How can male gamers possibly give women a hard time? To do so they would have to actually have contact with a woman; other than their mommies I mean. From the gamers that I have seen I just don't get the impression that this ever happens. Even if they did somehow manage to bump into a female I can't imagine they would be rude. They would freeze up and be incapable of speech for the remainder of the day! You can't be rude when you are silently passed out on the floor!
And then there is the whole concept that there are girls out there who actually want to be considered a part of "gamer" culture. I'm not knocking girls in any way here. I'm sure they are just as good at playing, producing, etc.. video games as boys are and should be allowed to without harassment. But.. what does that have to do with BEING a gamer anyway? From the outside it appears to be pretty much defined as awkward, socially stunted teenage* boy who has never known a girl. How can a girl be that? A girl must be capable of talking to a girl right? That makes her not a "gamer" by definition. Also.. has she never changed in front of a mirror! A gamer can't have seen a woman naked. Not in real life anyway. If that ever happened the universe would instantly end!
* - yes, there are old gamers but aren't they really just frozen teenage "personalities" in frail, underdeveloped middle-aged bodies?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 06 2014, @08:29PM
I just don't get this whole controversy. How can male gamers possibly give women a hard time?
By calling in death threats containing the home address of them and their families, apparently.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:29PM
Proof? Is any of what you claim true or just wishful thinking to backup your opinion?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday October 06 2014, @11:17PM
Yes, I just routinely make up any damn fool thing I can pull out of my ass to support my points.
Go google it yourself; your hands aren't broken. I think it was Sarkeesian who got threatened.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @11:44PM
There's pretty strong evidence she, Anita, fabricated her mere recent threats to get in on gamer gate, which happens to coincide with her recent video release. I don't doubt either of them get death threats, I get them regularly and I'm a nobody, but in this case, I'm inclined to believe Anita's are made up.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @12:22AM
Oh well you "think" so, yeah that's good enough for me and everyone else.
Why didn't you just say so in the first place?
(Score: 2) by keplr on Monday October 06 2014, @10:57PM
Holy shit, if I fled my house every time someone threatened me I'd probably sell it--since I'd never spend any time there. The people you really need to worry about don't try to scare you first. The guy who sends death threats is too cowardly to ever do anything, he's trying to get you to react. Reacting, having a public meltdown on Twitter, is therefore the worst thing you can do.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Saturday October 11 2014, @06:14AM
Really? Did you really take my comment seriously? There's a whole discussion below here. WTF!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday October 11 2014, @09:25PM
1. If you don't indicate so anywhere in your post, don't be surprised when your sarcasm isn't clear.
2. If you realize later you didn't know what you were talking about, don't play it off like you were being sarcastic when you weren't.
I take the Occam's Razor approach to replying--unless they are obviously being sarcastic, assume their points are in earnest.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday October 06 2014, @10:34PM
I've seen it happen, and pretty frequently. On XBox Live I report them, and deal with them as appropriate elsewhere. In general just calling them out for the insecure children they are is a good approach. It does generally seem to be the under 18 crowd as far as I can tell. It's not just obnoxious sexist behaviour either, they're just as bad with racist comments.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @07:46PM
Feminists need to be thrown out of kernel development, like how they threw anti-feminist men out of debian and other linux distro development.
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Monday October 06 2014, @08:34PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @08:27PM
I tried to read TFS but I now have a very vague timeline of what happened but no idea what the arguments were about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @09:48PM
Oddly the single best repository is the encyclopedia dramatica article.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:25PM
StarCraft rulez, fukkers! whahahahaha!!!!
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Monday October 06 2014, @10:29PM
A dumb broad attempting to create strife and animosity. She is presumptuous, and I got a huge "I'm cooler than you vibe" from her. Well, two can play at that game bitch. I'm way cooler than you are, nah nah nah nah boo boo stick your head in doo doo... or the article you wrote, either will work.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @01:19AM
I finally figured it all out! I had to do a lot of searching to understand this Gamergate shit, so I hope it can be helpful to someone else wondering what it's all about:
Alright, so, here's what happened.
1. Some uggy chick named Zoe Quinn (who created software called "Depression Quest") slept with a bunch of dudes, including journalists from game review websites, while in a relationship with her boyfriend.
2. Her boyfriend got pissed off and wrote about his (now) ex-girlfriend's sexual promiscuity on some blogs.
3. Some game reviewer(s) on YouTube reviewed "Depression Quest" and, while doing so, mentioned Zoe's sexual promiscuity, so she used the DMCA to get their videos taken down for using images of her software.
4. Internet people got upset and tweeted and made YouTube videos and stuff about all of the above.
NOTE: At this point I need to note that at least one of the people Zoe Quinn slept with is a reviewer of video games. They call themselves "video game journalists". Basically you can say that she "slept with a person who published a review of her video game," which might make the validity of the review become questionable. Carrying on...
5. For some reason a bunch of video game reviewers were found to be donating money to Zoe Quinn for unknown reasons at this point in the story.
6. Completely unrelated to Zoe Quinn's story, a video game reviewer named Patricia Hernandez was discovered to be sleeping with a bunch of video game developers. Suddenly it's like, "wtf is going on in the world of video game reviews!?"
7. Some people discovered that someone named Robin Arnott slept with Zoe Quinn. The problem is apparently that Robin Arnott was also on a "panel" that reviewed Zoe Quinn's "Depression Quest" video game (and gave her an award for it).
8. Game review websites started implementing policies that their journalists can't donate money to game developers.
9. Somehow people thought that the above point was sexist. (Your guess is as good as mine, I don't get this...)
10. Suddenly a lot of other people I've never heard of before started tweeting/making YouTube videos/posting on Facebook/etc. about all of this, and it continues to spiral awkwardly out of control.
In summary, this shit doesn't apply to people who actually play video games and don't give a fuck about social media. I hope I helped!
(Score: 2) by goodie on Tuesday October 07 2014, @02:12AM
Thanks for this, at least it gives some sort of context I'll be able to validate later on when I have some time (if I still have some interest in this by then...)
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday October 07 2014, @04:35AM
Yes you did! So Thanks :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @10:30AM
Well, both of the game developers accused of "bed-bribing" game bloggers were female.
Which may be just because by the vast majority of game bloggers are male, and therefore male game developers are rather unlikely to sleep with them (and if they tried, it would be unlikely to get them better reviews ;-)). But it fits perfectly with the stereotype of women making their career through sex.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @02:37PM
Great summary.
You just forgot the bit where people started doxing each other as retaliation, and we found out that not only the indie awards were hijacked, the very same people in charge of awarding them were investors of the winning entries - thus profiting from the gratuitous publicity and violation of the competition rules.
And ZQ also pocketed money originally intended to create a competition for female game designers.
A lot of people don't care about those people's character. They are just angry at how their trust on people supposedly "fighting for the little guy" (indie devs) were taking advantage of everyone, and how so many media outlets were so quick to censor the outcry by insinuating it was all about misogyny.