aliengmr said:
This has been has been my problem from the start, when has conservative social views ever wanted to add to gaming? I'm not talking about Conservatives, I'm talking about the social views, which have been held by various ideologies. To be even more specific, what has "Fox news" given to gaming, symbolically speaking.
From trying to legislate games in the 90's to scapegoating them even today, when someone like Milo pops up my alarms start going off. I mean the tone seems to be that of wanting to censor ourselves. GG doesn't want Journalists talking about it, but whats next?
I want to make this very clear, so long as it ADDS to gaming and doesn't take away, ALL views are welcome in my book. A game's content is between the developer and their consumers, period.
Bottomline is this, what Milo said about gamers was FAR worse than what Leigh Alexander said. If gamergate is going to literally say, "Well he's helping us." you have no credibility with me.
One issue is that the image of gamers, occasionally deservedly, is now being dragged through the mud by its own enthusiast press.
I'm completely inured to the fact that in the population at large (and subsequently also journalism at large), gaming as a hobby has at best been looked at with the sort of bemused condescension that is also reserved for, say, comic books or people who collect dead bugs. I don't always necessarily like it, but hey, keeping up with the ins and outs of a hobby as diverse as this is understandably beyond the grasp of casual or disinterested observers.
Conservative media has been running with the notion that gaming is the hobby of kids and the adults who refuse to accept that they're not one (and is thus secretly dangerous to children). Other media are running with the same narrative, it's simply originating from a different source.
But, interest is bubbling up. Gaming is leaking out into the larger field of pop culture. What is your typical, non-gaming journalist to do when he or she wants to peek inside? Read forums and articles, watch posts on reddit, and follow people on twitter? No, because you have a journalist contributor to your organization on file - if not down the hallway - who follows and reports on this stuff already.
If I'm a clueless journalist and I want to know why people are rioting in the streets over some scandal in sports, my first port of call is the sports desk across the newsroom, and if the person at that desk tells me there's no story other than sports fans being troglodytes, then that is likely going to color my reporting - if I even choose to report at all at that point.
At the end of the day, gaming journalism is basically
Cat Fancy. It's an enthusiast press, and it's abundantly clear that it barely holds itself to the barren standards of one. Except, unfortunately, when other press come calling for information or quick filler articles, our
Cat Fancy is telling them that too many cats are vectors for toxoplasmosis and most gamers are crazy cat ladies and if you hang around them too long you'll get toxoplasmosis also and really maybe its time we all moved on to ferrets. It's enraging to people who seriously want to discuss cats (even though, yes, lots of the people who'd want to talk about cats that much are probably crazy), and it does nothing to make the hobby
as it stands more acceptable. That doesn't mean I'm arguing that games journalists shouldn't talk about social issues in gaming, or that we should all accept gaming as it is. But it does mean that those who've one way or the other come to represent the hobby to their colleagues are presenting their bias without any sense of reflection.
Milo has his motives - I doubt he takes gaming all that more seriously now, but this is a great time to show the conservative blogs and press how ideologically-opposite "journalists" can craft a narrative behind the scenes (and that really, really fits
his narrative). He's walking into
Cat Fancy and happily pissing on everything, but at the end of the day he's still going to think gamers are just crazy cat people. Which basically leaves the hard-right thinking the hobby is ridiculous for yet another reason, neutral observers thinking the hobby is ridiculous as they always have, and social progressives still thinking it's ridiculous for the reasons they've been told for the past several years (or more insidiously, for the push-back against the notion that crafting a narrative at all is a problem so long as it's for the right reasons).
So, when you see me taking our enthusiast press to task for this stuff, it's because their apparent disregard for the hobby equates to others continuing disregard for the hobby. It means that when I ask at least for a little transparency in the form of disclosing who you're friends with or who you're donating money to or who has been flying you out to a preview junkets, it's from a sincere belief that doing so will show that you take your job somewhat seriously and the hobby somewhat seriously. It also means that your peers across the newsroom might just be able to take the hobby somewhat seriously, as well, when they can tell if what you say might be only be a good start, rather than the conclusion, of a story. And finally it means I have less reason to worry about fucking
Breitbart coming in and running politically roughshod over journalists that really should have known better and making this whole industry seem even more bush league and backhanded.
I'm sorry if that's not clear, or if you think I have to cross my heart and promise that I'm not some form of bigot before you take
me seriously, but that's why I support #gamergate...
...or I would, if I used twitter...
edit: By the way, here's an article by
The Atlantic that basically mirrors my thoughts on the matter: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/good-souls-corruption-in-the-enthusiast-press/244743/