GamerGate thread

[Kuya]

Anita just had an opinion piece up on the New York Times. This one is bound to make some GGers angry too.

[Penthesilea]

Again, unless there's actual data to suggest that female, sexualized, "prop" NPCs lead to real world manifestations of misogyny I think its all over blown.

If there needs to be more "representation" of LGBT/women, then pitch your own ideas that encapsulate just that. Don't try to drive others from developing THEIR product, make your own fucking product.

[Kuya]

I'm 100% in agreement that Arthur Gies and Ben Kuchera are full of shit, and that Polygon's editorial voice leaves a lot to be desired.

But saying 'x and y shouldn't exist in reviews' is not how you improve journalism. A variety of critical voices, whether or not you agree with them or what their motivations are, is a sign of healthy journalism, and the opposite of corruption/collusion. A review that takes exception with female representation and uses that as part of the score is allowed to exist. It doesn't represent an attack on gamers. Jim Sterling has covered this at least twice.

The article on 8chan GGers at least seems to give the impression that they do think ethics in gaming journalism is the same thing as reviewers and games having a feminist, or in their words, SJW agenda. It looks like a classic reactionary besieged mentality movement. At least from looking at the 8channers from which GameGate allegedly came from.

[NynJa]

I'm 100% in agreement that Arthur Gies and Ben Kuchera are full of shit, and that Polygon's editorial voice leaves a lot to be desired.

But saying 'x and y shouldn't exist in reviews' is not how you improve journalism. A variety of critical voices, whether or not you agree with them or what their motivations are, is a sign of healthy journalism, and the opposite of corruption/collusion. A review that takes exception with female representation and uses that as part of the score is allowed to exist. It doesn't represent an attack on gamers. Jim Sterling has covered this at least twice.

If I'm reading a review on a game, I expect a review on the game, not the author's opinion of shit not fucking relevant to the game.

Review on the game: Story (good story or ridiculous bullshit?), content (linear or open world exploration with extra stuff to do, extra goals, etc), playability (stupid control settings that cant be changed, glitches/bugs at release, etc), A/V (good graphics, how bad are the graphic glitches, good clear sound).

Authors opinion: too many boobs, inherent bias towards company due to name (X game actually has better graphics than Y game, but because Y game is from an indy dev, it gets a higher score on graphics "because I support indy devs" OR see above about blizzard getting a pass on D3 crashing all of the blizzard servers because "they have a good rep and it will get fixed"), not enough boobs, a woman gets killed (ignoring 100 men getting killed).

[Mazmaz]

You people hated Myst the same amount right? Just checking.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

Kuya is like the maxtm of sjw's

[Penthesilea]

You people hated Myst the same amount right? Just checking.

Yep, thought it was terrible.

[Koul]

lots of reading inc

https://medium.com/@cainejw/an-actua...e-dfd809858f68

http://www.slate.com/articles/techno...quer_plan.html

https://medium.com/@aquapendulum/my-...cs-f890d357188

[Kuya]

lots of reading inc

https://medium.com/@cainejw/an-actua...e-dfd809858f68

http://www.slate.com/articles/techno...quer_plan.html

https://medium.com/@aquapendulum/my-...cs-f890d357188

The second article is actually pretty good.

[Koul]

The second article is actually pretty good.

I thought so as well.

[Kibble]

lots of reading inc

https://medium.com/@cainejw/an-actua...e-dfd809858f68

This one has some problems, not with anything they wrote specifically, but because the Newsweek article forgot to mention some stuff. The "neutral" tweets aren't actually neutral, they just weren't able to parse a positive or negative from them.

Guy who works at the company that did most of the data for Newsweek.

I think this article is better for looking at the contents of GG-related tweets.

[Blubbartron]

I dislike all of these articles because they're the equivalent of tone trolling. Whether someone is getting overwhelming positive or negative attention is completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the arguments and whether there's any evidence/logic to back up the claims.

For example, a person who has a heartfelt belief that 2+3=chair and tweets about it will probably get a large number of negative responses on the order of "lawl you're fucking dumb." It's trickier when dealing with a subjective and complex set of issues, but there are still more intellectually honest ways to deal with it than "wah wah muh feelings."

[Priran]

According to who? Are you somehow under the impression that video game reviews are under a code of ethics?

It sounds to me that you don't like the way that Polygon reviews their games. That's cool. I don't either. That's why I don't read them or take the review numbers they give seriously.

They're not doing anything wrong. They're doing something you don't like. Which is why you shouldn't read them.

This isn't reporting. This isn't even promotion - which is something you COULD make an argument about, but the only thing anyone seems to talk about their is ZQ, where hteir entire argument is riddled with misinformation. This is about reviews, which are by default opinions. There's no code to break. You're upset about quality and the angle the reviews come from, not about its ethics.

I mean you're wrong but gosh darn do you have a gumption about it.

Biased reviews aren't just bad as a matter of opinion, they're bad because they're anti-consumer.

[BaneTheBrawler]

[Xajii]

I mean you're wrong but gosh darn do you have a gumption about it.

Biased reviews aren't just bad as a matter of opinion, they're bad because they're anti-consumer.

Only if the consumer doesn't read the review, which is the consumer's fault. Any review I've seen that GG got all up in flames about described in pointed detail why the score was lowered due to these "moral" reasons - if you're a consumer it is your responsibility to see that is the opinion of the reviewer and if you don't agree with it then you don't take it into account.

I'm a fan of Dynasty Warriors games. They get panned by every reviewer out there because there hasn't been much innovation in the series traditionally and they're essentially just hack and slash. I'll read the reviews because I want to know if something is mechanically changed or flawed, glitchy, etc. They'll give it a low grade because it lacks story, isn't long enough, etc. etc. and I'll buy the game anyway because Im not a fucking moron and I can make my own decisions.

For a group of people so protective of the identity of the consumer, you sure seem to assume they're idiots a lot.

[BaneTheBrawler]

to be fair, most people are idiots.

[Priran]

Only if the consumer doesn't read the review, which is the consumer's fault. Any review I've seen that GG got all up in flames about described in pointed detail why the score was lowered due to these "moral" reasons - if you're a consumer it is your responsibility to see that is the opinion of the reviewer and if you don't agree with it then you don't take it into account.

I'm a fan of Dynasty Warriors games. They get panned by every reviewer out there because there hasn't been much innovation in the series traditionally and they're essentially just hack and slash. I'll read the reviews because I want to know if something is mechanically changed or flawed, glitchy, etc. They'll give it a low grade because it lacks story, isn't long enough, etc. etc. and I'll buy the game anyway because Im not a fucking moron and I can make my own decisions.

For a group of people so protective of the identity of the consumer, you sure seem to assume they're idiots a lot.

being friends with a dev or getting money from a publisher isn't quite the same kind of bias as not being a fan of a niche genre

[Xajii]

being friends with a dev or getting money from a publisher isn't quite the same kind of bias as not being a fan of a niche genre

Ok, so there's 2 types of review issues at hand. I was mostly talking about the Bayonetta 2-type issue that a lot of people were complaining about. If you're talking more about Gone Home, where someone was friends with a music composer or osmething or whatever, then my point is basically that if you can't read a review of that "game" and figure out whether or not itd be for you then you probably arent a smart consumer anyway.

I've honestly seen more of "can't review this game because I have connections" in gmaes journalism than I have seen any evidence of actual corruption.

[Tarage]

I had to explain Gamer Gate to a friend of mine who couldn't get a straight answer on it. I explained it thusly.

It started with some dude getting upset because his girlfriend slept with five different people. It exploded because she was a game dev and the people she slept with were game journalists and while it was later proven that they didn't write articles about her game, the bigger serpent of corruption in game journalism was awoken. Now there are two sides, feminists who are fighting against perceived misogyny in the game industry, and people upset with perceived corruption in game journalism. Both sides are convinced that the other side is the devil and both contain radical elements making things worse for everyone.

He responded that those two issues have nothing to do with each other, and I had to sadly nod.

He said it was retarded. Again, I nodded.

[Jefe]

So he just stood there w/ his arms crossed ignoring the fact the person in question slept w/ 5 dudes that could potentially help her career? Like nothing suspicious, perfectly normal? Like just crickets and nodding? Really?