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posted by martyb on Monday October 06 2014, @05:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the meta-game dept.

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?

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @09:15PM

    by Vanderhoth (61) on Monday October 06 2014, @09:15PM (#102658)

    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

      by JeanCroix (573) on Monday October 06 2014, @09:46PM (#102687)
      That video is full of win.
      • (Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @10:02PM

        by Vanderhoth (61) on Monday October 06 2014, @10:02PM (#102704)

        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:

        CodeMonkeyPA

        @Alba Kirky

        Maybe next time you can point them to games like Portal 1 & 2 (female lead kicking arse), Final Fantasy (a number of the games feature women saving the world, Terra Branford, Tifa Lockhart, Lightning, Celis, etc...), Mirror's Edge (women doing hardcore Parkour), Resident Evil (Several leading women in the series), Fatal Frame, Parasite Eve, X-com has female characters to pick from, Sims, Folklore was pretty good, bullet witch, Primal, The Longest Journey, Indigo Prophecy, Lilith from Borderlands is pretty rad, Heavy Rain, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem (kind of scary though), Left 4 Dead (Zoe's my fav character), Silent hill (also very scary), Half-life 2, Grey Matter (love the writer for this one, she also wrote the kings quest series only two of those had female leads though), cognition, Some of the Broken sword games (great puzzle games) had Niko as a playable character, Shantae, Tomb Raider (Laura Craft might be idealized, but she's pretty bad @ss), Beyond Good & Evil, Several women from Street Fighter are the best fighters in the game, Perfect Dark, Metroid (Samus was probably the gold standard for awesome, until Metroid zero.)

        You might actually just want to watch this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXMoLCA3GQ4&list=)), it doesn't cover them all, but there's actually quite a few video games with great female leads.

        I don't think he's right about the person doing cognition. Jane Jensen and Pinkerton Road studios did cognition. Roberta Williams did Kings Quest.

        --
        "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
        • (Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday October 06 2014, @10:06PM

          by Vanderhoth (61) on Monday October 06 2014, @10:06PM (#102708)

          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

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 06 2014, @10:19PM (#102718)

          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

            by Vanderhoth (61) on Monday October 06 2014, @10:48PM (#102745)

            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

              by Vanderhoth (61) on Monday October 06 2014, @11:01PM (#102762)

              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

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:28AM (#102863)

              > 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

            by velex (2068) on Monday October 06 2014, @11:48PM (#102795) Journal

            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

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:32AM (#102864)

              > 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.