GamerGate thread

[Vandalhart]

Aside from Sargon, I have been watching a few of Karen Straughan's videos. I may watch some of Mundane Matts and King of "something"... I can't seem to remember his name.

Karen Straughan's videos in particular are very interesting, they aren't entirely in the vein of GamerGate.

[Charismatic]

It's over, all that's left are the people who were "at war" with SJWs since the dawn of time.

I dunno about that.
All of the GG sites and subs are still active and I even saw a GamerGate 'ad' on NeoGAF the other day. I mean, it could be as you say but... nothing ever seems to be as you say.

[tyven]

is it over for you, chari? has your battle been won or do you still carry the torch?

[Charismatic]

I've never been part of GamerGate :)

[tyven]

TRAITOR

[Charismatic]

???

[Galkaeater]

tyven is the internet aristocrat

[Mazmaz]

1) This is an internet movement. As such, there are always going to be trolls attached to it, either because some idiots just don't really understand when the Internet becomes Real Life, or because we r leejun 4 teh lulz. Truthfully, there isn't any credible claim or proof that the harassment going on by allegedly-GG-based people existed, or that they were actually from Gamergate, or whatever else. It's no different than me throwing a brick through someone's home window with a letter claiming I act on behalf of BG. But instead of the narrative becoming focused on who was attacked, it became latched on who allegedly did the attacking. It wasn't circling the wagons, it was rallying the troops. Plus, there's the completely suspect nature of the "proof" that folks like Anita offered up. A screencap of tweets from a non-logged user, with no search history, with no hashtags, no @user tags, and taken seconds after the most heinous threats? How was it even discovered? If I started tweeting from a previously-neutral account with the #antigamergate or #femfreq hashtag and threatened to kill some famous dudes, would this be taken as seriously? Or would I be written off as a troll? That's neither here nor there, though.

I'm not talking about Anita. I'm talking about the catalyst for the entire GG thing, Zoe Quinn. If you don't remember the steaming pile of misogyny that started that mess, I don't know what to tell you. The bad PR started from the beginning. Everything else has just been reinforcement.

And you really don't need the brand name. You can write articles and opinion pieces and educate people about game journalism and be critical, without going "#GAMERGATE" all over your piece. Seriously, I think people who would just talk about the issue instead would be taken a lot more seriously.

[Lyall]

I'm not talking about Anita. I'm talking about the catalyst for the entire GG thing, Zoe Quinn. If you don't remember the steaming pile of misogyny that started that mess, I don't know what to tell you. The bad PR started from the beginning. Everything else has just been reinforcement.

And you really don't need the brand name. You can write articles and opinion pieces and educate people about game journalism and be critical, without going "#GAMERGATE" all over your piece. Seriously, I think people who would just talk about the issue instead would be taken a lot more seriously.

No, see, you're proving my point. Did a bunch of assholes sling shit at Zoe? Of course they did, someone on the internet revealed themselves to be a despicable being. But that wasn't the origin of Gamergate, that just happened to be struck from the same bolt of lightning. From the door it was split into two camps: The trolls, and the people going "Hey, wait a minute, maybe there's something to all these personal connections and who we're reading about on game blogs."

There's two possibilities: That everyone with good games just so happened to know one another (in a world where IGA got more than a hundred applications) and the cream rose to the top, or these people were making the right connections and guaranteeing their friends were taking care of them. Edmund McMillen has gone on record of talking about how ridiculous their "judging panel" was, and these are the folks who awarded Zoe and Phil Fish top prizes.

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInActi..._mcmillen_and/

Spoiler: show

Ed: [In the past, IGF] was more of an Oscar situation, where the best game won. You know, in quotes, “best game,” whatever. This year, it's a backlash year, where it's the opposite. Where, if your game – like, none of the games in the IGF in the finals this year are these crazy, blockbuster games. There's nothing controversial about any of them, no big games in the IGF this year. But it's like, people just aren't happy. These people have no idea who they are. A lot of the judges are just writers, or, I don't know what. And, they all have very strong opinions that go against the perceived grain, of not wanting games that are finished and have come out and are successful to win at all. It's just like, hate, hate, hate, and it's really disturbing, and weird.

Ed:

But the thing is, every year, I am a judge, and every year I come off with this feeling of just like, “I don't belong here.” Just a feeling of not belonging at all. It's just arguments, and opinions on opinions, and nobody's actually going by these rules that are set in place, they're just going by their own personal rule set, where they think, you know, that – there's arguments that are literally, “hey, this person needs help! And I think letting them win will help!” They directly say, “this game is better than this other game BUT, this game needs some help. Let's make them win.” It's just like, oh my God, there's so much wrong with that.

It's just so fucked up because, not only does it fuck up the winner, it fucks up the loser! It's a horrible thing, it's just like – if we're at this point now, why even enter a game if you've released it and it's done well? Don't enter it! You're not gonna win! Because whatever agenda they choose is gonna choose your fate.

[In 2010, they entered Super Meat Boy into IGF. It lost to a game called Monaco, which I've never heard of.]

Ed: It pains me to have Phil Fish [who won Grand Prize in 2012] directly tell me that – he straight up just told us that, “I was one of the many people that voted against Super Meat Boy because I knew you guys were going to be fine.”

Tommy: Yeah, that was great, right after we lost, Brian Crecente [former editor-in-chief of Kotaku, founding editor and news editor of Polygon] coming up to us and saying, “oh you guys didn't really need it.” I'm like, “wow my sugar's 330 right now and I have $200 in the bank.” [Tommy is diabetic]

On the other hand, you're technically right about being able to drop the label and just write independently. The truth to that is, though, that it would never gain traction when their competition can just go "Welp, GG blog" and have their army tear it apart. Beyond that, getting press releases and access to popular games from developers is a non-starter for unknowns.

You're right, though. If the right folks buckled down and did the work, they feasibly could make a start-up game site and try and get it off of the ground. That just takes work that the typical hashtag-spouting "activist" doesn't have the time, experience or drive for.

[Teryu]

There's gonna be an episode of Law and Order SVU based on Gamergate. Although seeing old media recognize Gamergate is always sad and pathetic, it's probably gonna suck because of pandering to SJW audiences and because the series has been bad for the last 6 or so years.

[Charismatic]

There's gonna be an episode of Law and Order SVU based on Gamergate.

This is the most hilarious thing I read all week.

[Teryu]

Right?

[Blubbartron]

Fingers crossed for rape threats that are investigated and determined to have been made by the person they were against. Bonus points for sock puppets or journalists conspiring to give unwavering support for certain agendas.

[Teryu]

Nah, they're just gonna find out that literally every single thing that the journalists were saying was true and that all gamers wear fedoras and are white and fat males.

[Blubbartron]

I think the problem to me with comparing this to video games and who the target demographic is, is that now the demographic is not just males. There are quite a few males who resist this, and insist that women do not play video games, which many studies have shown to be completely false. The female gamer demographic is growing quite rapidly but the video game culture still heavily targets men. I'm not going to talk about scantily clad women in barely-there armor, but I can see where that's frustrating for the average female gamer, especially when male gamers - especially online - continue to insist that we don't exist, and if we do, we don't know anything about the gaming industry. I've also heard nightmares about women who work at places like GameStop who, when answering the phone, have to put up with men asking for "the guys on staff" because they refuse to even acknowledge that a woman can know anything about games or offer good recommendations.

So I'm not sure that I would look at gaming in the same way. Gaming has become a lot more heterogeneous and thus, should consider appealing to females, and not by making "fashion games!" because of course women just want to shop and look pretty - but having female protagonists that aren't necessarily sex objects or whose sole purpose isn't a male character's love interest. And there has been a lot of resistance from the online male gaming community, because we apparently want to "take gaming away from men and make it all about women!" No. We just want more accurate female representation in games that are actually good and not just pandering to what the male-driven industry thinks women like.

A few things:

1) Women that enjoy video games exist, but the overwhelming majority of female gamers are not playing the AAA titles that male gamers are. Female gamers, if you want to call them that at all, are overwhelmingly playing shit like Wii fitness and Farmville.

2) Yes, it's an absolute nightmare for a female to be so oppressed that a guy would assume, based on the entirety of his life experience, that she is unlikely to have similar tastes in video games. See point #1. This kind of thing also applies intra-gender as well. For instance, I play a lot of RPGs, and I know better than to ask a dudebro for his opinion, because 9 times out of 10 it's going to be "Madden all the way bro" or "COD remake #11".

3) You know as well as I do that they the SJWs putting pressure on game developers aren't saying "why not make other games that would appeal to women". They're saying CHANGE your game that you've made to appeal to your demographic (male hardcore vidya gamers) into something that also appeals to us. They are quite literally trying to take over the industry. This is obvious by the fact that SJWs have actually oppressed female game developers for not towing the anti-GG line.

[Aksannyi]

I think it's funny that you think that female gamers are only playing Farmville. Did you know that females make up 37% of World of Warcraft players? Hardly an overwhelming majority of males. And that's just an MMO, which notoriously attract more males. http://wowraider.net/demographics/en/

I guarantee you more women are playing COD or HALO than you think, they just don't make it known. Why? Because they get harassed and told to make sandwiches. Shit gets old.

Any gamer calling a Gamestop for recommendations and that sort of thing deserves whatever shit game/product they get tricked into buying.

That being said, this is probably more suited to the Gamergate thread. Feel free to continue it there. I think it's worth discussing.

I have absolutely no desire to join that thread - I purposely have not followed it because I don't know what's going on, I can't get a straight answer from a non-biased source, and the thread is an absolute cesspool of garbage.

I'm willing to cease the discussion in here, though I don't think it's entirely irrelevant if we're talking about female representation in forms of the media.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Hah. Too bad!

Much of the cesspool happened before I was modded. It's not as bad as you might think. Much of what you've just posted has been discussed before, and could probably use some re-hashing.

[Blubbartron]

I think it's funny that you think that female gamers are only playing Farmville. Did you know that females make up 37% of World of Warcraft players? Hardly an overwhelming majority of males. And that's just an MMO, which notoriously attract more males. http://wowraider.net/demographics/en/

I guarantee you more women are playing COD or HALO than you think, they just don't make it known. Why? Because they get harassed and told to make sandwiches. Shit gets old.



I have absolutely no desire to join that thread - I purposely have not followed it because I don't know what's going on, I can't get a straight answer from a non-biased source, and the thread is an absolute cesspool of garbage.

I'm willing to cease the discussion in here, though I don't think it's entirely irrelevant if we're talking about female representation in forms of the media.

The lack of critical thinking and/or reading ability is ENORMOUSLY amusing to me. You're linking a site as supporting evidence, and one of the first sentences on it is:

On this page you may find a various statistic data about World of Warcraft max-level characters aggregated by our site.

That 37% is 37% of characters, not players. The character's gender very often doesn't reflect the player's gender. This data is literally useless for either side of the debate.

[Charismatic]

And that's just an MMO, which notoriously attract more males.

Uh, not really.
Not when you compare to other mainstream genres anyway.

You're not gonna like the way I'm putting this (though its the truth) but the games with the lower skill ceilings tend to be the ones with the most female representation among players of the genre which is why you see so many females playing MMOs. (and even then, its probably not even actually as good as 2:1 male:female)

[NynJa]

How many casuals play WoW though? Is that 37% the actual active playerbase, or from day 1 including dead accounts?