BREAKING: Women of #GamerGate Make Breakthrough on HuffPo Live

[BloatedGuppy]

You do realize what you are arguing for is capitalism? Where anyone can put out anything because someone might buy into their bullshit. Would a game with graphic depictions of sexual assault be okay because someone might want that?

I think you'd probably have issues with violation of obscenity laws. Unless this hypothetical scenario of yours doesn't involve fussy elements like legality.

 

[Thorn14]

2. Yes I would argue it was forced, but the whole thing is a bit difficult, seeing as they 'lied' about the endings.

What lies?

Oh please God don't turn this into a Mass Effect 3 ending debate.

Don't make me get out my "Abandon Thread" gifs!

Sorry, I initially brought it up. I was just making the point that the Mass Effect 3 fiasco was the first clear sign of disconnect between journalists and gamers.

Erik Kain did a lot of good articles on it.

I wouldn't say it was the first clear sign, but it definitely highlighted the problem.

Oh yeah, its been bubbling for a while, and the ME3 thing was the first time that tension was really showing.

It got corked though though quickly enough, but it was never resolved, just bottled and ready to burst.

And here we are.

 

[redlemon]

No, no, no. I asked you why you don't just not read things journalists write if you think they're corrupt, not why don't you "just ignore the corruption and ethics in gaming journalism". Those two things are very different. You said because their "lies have a negative effect on society", which I asked you to give an example of (lies + it having a negative effect on society) and pointed out that doesn't actually answer the question I asked, which was "What's stopping you from not reading the things they write?".

You then brought up some examples of people that don't appear to be gaming journalists, so I have asked you to link what you said to corruption ad ethics in gaming journalism.

I don't see where you're getting the "Blame this on me" thing from, seeing I'm politely asking quite normal questions based on the things you've said. So, could you please link the two?

Ok then. I was talking about ethics. You asked me a question unrelated to ethics. I believed you were implying something with the question that was related to ethics but apparently I was wrong. So basically you just asked me a question unrelated to ethics and then when I answered, you respond with "what does this have to do with ethics". That's some wonderful misleading tactics you have there.

Em, no, you can't "draw parallels to it". It just simply doesn't have anything to do with ethics in gaming journalism, because it's just not about ethics in gaming journalism in any way.

Really? Does gaming journalism have a completely different set of ethics than other forms of journalism? Is lying to your audience in order to foster hate towards a group of people you don't like ethical in gaming journalism?

Could you clarify in what way I have distorted your words?

I don't believe I ever said "reading these articles is going to stop society from doing those bad things".

 

[DaViller]

How is you reading what they write stopping society from doing that? I don't see the connection. If you don't read it, then society will turn to shit? How?

It's simple, if someone gives bayonetta 2 a lower score because of oversexualisation, society goes to shit. This can be prevented if we demand that noone ever mentions oversexualisation in a review again and to do that we have to read the review first obviously.

It is also adviseable that we, just from time to time, dress up in elaborate costumes and fight corruption or sjws or cultural marxism or whatever. I think thats the general idea.

 

[Fappy]

2. Yes I would argue it was forced, but the whole thing is a bit difficult, seeing as they 'lied' about the endings.

What lies?

Oh please God don't turn this into a Mass Effect 3 ending debate.

Don't make me get out my "Abandon Thread" gifs!

Sorry, I initially brought it up. I was just making the point that the Mass Effect 3 fiasco was the first clear sign of disconnect between journalists and gamers.

Erik Kain did a lot of good articles on it.

I wouldn't say it was the first clear sign, but it definitely highlighted the problem.

Oh yeah, its been bubbling for a while, and the ME3 thing was the first time that tension was really showing.

It got corked though though quickly enough, but it was never resolved, just bottled and ready to burst.

And here we are.

Kind of building off this point; I don't think the main issue dividing our community is about ideologies or "ethics". As has been mentioned in the #GG thread before, I think it has more to do with the increasingly toxic dialogue between gamers, journalists and developers. It is a mutual lack of respect, basically. You can't point to one group and say they're responsible for this mess, but I think we all could have done a better job making our community a positive place (a community in which journalists are a part of, no doubt).

 

[redlemon]

How is you reading what they write stopping society from doing that? I don't see the connection. If you don't read it, then society will turn to shit? How?

It's simple, if someone gives bayonetta 2 a lower score because of oversexualisation, society goes to shit. This can be prevented if we demand that noone ever mentions oversexualisation in a review again and to do that we have to read the review first obviously.

It is also adviseable that we, just from time to time, dress up in elaborate costumes and fight corruption or sjws or cultural marxism or whatever. I think thats the general idea.

I'm pretty sure I was talking about the part where journalists collude together to make society hate a specific group of people but go ahead and keep putting words into my mouth if you think that's going to help.

 

[Catrixa]

At this point, I'm getting the feeling Gamergate is simply focusing on the wrong points when trying to defend their positions. This interview was pretty much "ignore questions, regurgitate rhetoric." If I didn't know what they were talking about, I would have easily mistaken it for a presidential debate. Hell, those ladies could easily be politicians if they learned to be a tad sneakier with their question mitigation. Anyway, from what I've gathered in this thread and that video (and this whole debate, which I've really only seen from an outsider's POV), here's what I think Gamergate is trying to go for, since they didn't actually say any of this:

On journalistic integrity:

Spoiler: TL;DR, my speculations on Gamergate and journalistic integrity. I think there are two problems here: transparency and review diluting.

I don't think this has a thing to do with "objective" reviews. I think there are two problems here. One is, of course, transparency. If a games journalist is being paid by Ubisoft for a favorable review, that journalist has a duty to report this to their viewers. If a journalist could have their views swayed by anything (dev is there to answer questions about the game, they're being treated to dinner by the dev, they're sleeping with the dev, they're allowed to review the game early if the dev is allowed to screen the review, etc.), they should consider divulging that information, lest their credibility evaporate if they're found out (and this is the internet--they'll be found out).

The other issue is some kind of idea about diluting the review pool with non-valuable reviews (reviews you don't agree with, or don't think should affect the score). This makes a ton of sense if you greatly value things like Metacritic and expect others to do so as well. The awkward thing is: Metacritic is a driving force in the industry. So, for example, Supergame X is really fun, and everyone rates it highly. But, it gets a 75 on Metacritic, because a few reviewers hated the main character's outfit. The publisher of Supergame X then dissolves the studio and decides the property can't be salvaged, because it didn't get at least an 80 (or make some amount of money, or something). So, because the main character had a really terrible outfit, the whole creative team behind Supergame X is now gone, and we will never see Supergame Y. Bad reviews literally destroy Ok->Decent->Good games, so having less of them means games with less than 100% acceptance rates have a chance of disappearing forever. I can definitely get why this would anger people, but I'm pretty sure it has less to do with game reviewers and more to do with publishers. Movies with bad reviews still get sequels, so why not games? Review scores aren't a barometer for how well an idea should succeed.

On misogyny and whatnot:

Spoiler: TL;DR, I think we're still just afraid of losing games, and are still just fighting for that.

"Video games make people violent murderers. If we want our children to have any future other than Mad Max for the rest of forever, we will need to outright ban video games forever. Paradoxically, video games are also so addictive that they will turn our children into docile, drooling idiots who won't be able to feed themselves, much less take care of the planet when we're gone. Therefore, as you can see, because of these completely conflicting ideas, we absolutely must ban video games forever. No, we don't need to learn about them or play them, we just need to ban them. Forever."

This was pretty much the Angry Mothers propaganda for the infancy of video games, and it was both frustrating and scary. Not to mention completely and utterly wrong. Yeah, it still gets dredged up from its fetid grave every now and then, but it's only surprising when it's not Fox News doing the dredging. Of course, right after that, we're delving right into how politically correct video games are. How insensitive are we? Can't we all just take a break and freaking enjoy the games we fought so hard to defend? Why do we want to start the Video Games Are Actually Bad train again, right after we just dismantled the damn thing? Aren't we done?

The problem with discussing things like sexism and racism in games is that those discussions generate labels. And calling a game sexist or racist means the person who likes to play it is a sexist or racist, too (whether or not that really makes sense). People bring up the whole idea of "neutering games" or "dumbing games down so that they suck, but aren't offensive to anyone," but I think it's really just the idea of defending the medium from overreacting crazy people who want to shut games down forever. Whether or not the politically-correct interest groups are actually seeking the end of video games should matter, however, and I think it would behoove us to actually ask these questions, as opposed to going back and forth on whether or not sexism and racism still exist. For instance, if someone really does say, "We need to ban video games because they're sexist," we can at least all agree to ignore that point, whether we agree on anything else or not.

This post will probably be buried forever, but if it's not, I hope someone enjoyed it or can correct me if it's completely off-base.

 

[Thorn14]

2. Yes I would argue it was forced, but the whole thing is a bit difficult, seeing as they 'lied' about the endings.

What lies?

Oh please God don't turn this into a Mass Effect 3 ending debate.

Don't make me get out my "Abandon Thread" gifs!

Sorry, I initially brought it up. I was just making the point that the Mass Effect 3 fiasco was the first clear sign of disconnect between journalists and gamers.

Erik Kain did a lot of good articles on it.

I wouldn't say it was the first clear sign, but it definitely highlighted the problem.

Oh yeah, its been bubbling for a while, and the ME3 thing was the first time that tension was really showing.

It got corked though though quickly enough, but it was never resolved, just bottled and ready to burst.

And here we are.

Kind of building off this point; I don't think the main issue dividing our community is about ideologies or "ethics". As has been mentioned in the #GG thread before, I think it has more to do with the increasingly toxic dialogue between gamers, journalists and developers. It is a mutual lack of respect, basically. You can't point to one group and say they're responsible for this mess, but I think we all could have done a better job making our community a positive place (a community in which journalists are a part of, no doubt).

I still believe #GG believes in ethics in journalism. What the problem is so many people are slinging shits to each other, labeling each other with unkind words and it makes both sides dig in deeper and deeper and we're ended up with just a shitslinging contest with nothing going for it while moderates end up being background noise.

The Wu Hotwheels Kain "debate" summed up perfectly how this whole mess is going. 2 people going soapboxes and attacking each other while the moderate Kain just goes "I have no fucking idea what can be done..."

 

[AkaDad]

How is you reading what they write stopping society from doing that? I don't see the connection. If you don't read it, then society will turn to shit? How?

It's simple, if someone gives bayonetta 2 a lower score because of oversexualisation, society goes to shit. This can be prevented if we demand that noone ever mentions oversexualisation in a review again and to do that we have to read the review first obviously.

It is also adviseable that we, just from time to time, dress up in elaborate costumes and fight corruption or sjws or cultural marxism or whatever. I think thats the general idea.

I'm pretty sure I was talking about the part where journalists collude together to make society hate a specific group of people but go ahead and keep putting words into my mouth if you think that's going to help.

Has it ever occurred to you that people "hate" asshole gamers because of their actions and it's not because journalists point out that there are asshole gamers?

 

[Something Amyss]

Well I think we've all learned a lesson from this.

Women can be wrong too. Who knew?

Isn't that what Gamergate is about? Have you floated this theory past anyone?

What I think reviewers need to do is find a person knowledgeable in a certain genre that can explain the game in terms fans know and then also explain in terms others who know can understand. That isn't happening though, most of the time the reviewers just go full bias and full "feelings" on subjects without talking about anything relating to the game or its fans.

But they shouldn't talk about the fans (I'd like to see a game review that doesn't talk about anything relating to the game). Reviews aren't about the fandom. At least, they shouldn't be. The fans are going to buy Halo because it's Halo. The fans are going to buy Dynasty Warriors because it's Dynasty Warriors. The fans are going to buy GTA because it's GTA. A consumer review should address the consumer base, not just the people who are going to buy it anyway.

I mean, I'll say that for a niche publication, they should probably cater to that demographic, but that's not your ordinary gaming mag. Most of them only go as niche as to be PC Master Race Illustrated or Console Fan Monthly, not "Press Square over and over" or "Dudebro News." If I'm going to an RPOG site, I expect to see reviews aimed at RPG fans. If I'm going to the Escapist, IGN, etc., I expect to see a general review.

Kinda ironic that you used the same argument people annoyed at sexism in games threads do.

Only in the same way that it's ironic that the people annoyed at sexism in games aren't applying it evenly.

 

[Something Amyss]

Has it ever occurred to you that people "hate" asshole gamers because of their actions and it's not because journalists point out that there are asshole gamers?

To further this, is it possible that this is the Liberty Valance effect in action?

Rather than the media conspiring to make us look bad to the public, that the perception exists, so it's reported upon?

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

 

[AkaDad]

Has it ever occurred to you that people "hate" asshole gamers because of their actions and it's not because journalists point out that there are asshole gamers?

To further this, is it possible that this is the Liberty Valance effect in action?

Rather than the media conspiring to make us look bad to the public, that the perception exists, so it's reported upon?

"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

You said it better than I did, which is usually the case with your comments.