Poll: What is the future of gaming culture for gamers?

[grassgremlin]

With recent events of Gamergate escalating into mass media, I'm starting to get curious about where this all could lead to?

Do you expect a negative or a positive in the next year or two?
What scenario you think will play out if gamergate won or lose?

Does any of this matter to gaming?

I've been curious about it.
My ideal future is that win or lose, game sites may actually start to shape up for the better. Actually take ethics and journalism seriously.

Maybe games will not change and new and interesting kinds of games will be made.

The question is is gaming's future at risk in any form?
What do you think?

 

[MysticSlayer]

I'm not sure GamerGate itself will bring any change either good or bad, but I'm still optimistic about the rest of what's going on in gaming.

Despite the associated troubles and recent string women being driven from their homes, there's still plenty of women trying to make it into gaming, with some of them being successful at both getting into it and making their voices heard. Not only does that give them a place to help break down the barriers, whether intentional or unintentional, to women getting into the industry, but it also means that people with certain life experiences that previously had a hard time making their voices heard through games can now make their voices heard. It is still horrible what is going on now, and I can't imagine that we'll see significant changes in the next couple years, but if people continue fighting for an improvement of the representation of women in both the industry and the games themselves, then I think we'll see plenty of positive change in how they are viewed and treated over time.

This also extends to other underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in gaming.

Anyways, I'd go into my thoughts about a couple other things, but I frankly don't have time right now.

 

[small]

short term i see a large chunk of females in the industry leaving and those who were looking at starting a career in game development or releasing say an indy game stepping back and either doing something else or proceeding with a lot of resevations.

ethics wise with gaming sites, well i see some choosing to offer disclosure on conflict of intrest while other sites and publishers in general acting business as usual.

long term i see gaming progress into something sort of like cinema, with diversity from blockbusters to weird ass indy games.

where people get the hell over themselves and just accept that person x playing farmville is just as much a gamer as someone who plays call of duty, not to mention having people just be able to accept "yep thats a game" when they see something outside their normal "is this a game" reference.

honestly im just hoping gaming grows up and it stops looking like a rear guard fight from the nerd patrol to hang on to dear life and not have anything change

 

[shrekfan246]

I, for one, have bowed to our feminist SJW overlords and praise Jim for the PC (that's "politically correct", not "personal computer") brigade coming in to take away all the boobs from games. And I shall not rest until everyone else does the same! Muahahahaha!

 

[Mezahmay]

Spoiler: I have no doubt that the future of gaming will be bright and utopic...

As soon as individual game communities increase moderation/self-policing and become more welcoming environments. And game community sites in general step up moderation/self-policing. And the public perception of video game culture cleans up and gains a little more legitimacy. And Twitter dies. Once all these things happen, gaming's future will be a candy-soaked dream of double rainbows for a long time to come.

 

[grassgremlin]

Spoiler: I have no doubt that the future of gaming will be bright and utopic...

As soon as individual game communities increase moderation/self-policing and become more welcoming environments. And game community sites in general step up moderation/self-policing. And the public perception of video game culture cleans up and gains a little more legitimacy. And Twitter dies. Once all these things happen, gaming's future will be a candy-soaked dream of double rainbows for a long time to come.

Spoiler: Man butts! Man butts as far as the eye can see!

Honestly, I do feel like it'll be business as usual with a couple newer experiences being made. Character Customization is probably a area we will see a consistent change to accommodate all walks of life and creed. Heck, instead of a gender slider, their just might be a list of body types and nothing else, or a massive ridiculous list of gender signifiers. I just know of all the groups, the lgbt crowd will win out the most in this. That part I'm cool with.

 

[veloper]

I predict a future with lots of butthurt all around.
The trolls will rule the gaming community.

 

[Savryc]

Not much, people will still cling to their circle jerk of choice. Trolls will still run rings around them and get their jollies making said circle jerks go for each others throats. Games "journalism" will still be a fucking cesspit like it always has been.

As for GG winning or losing. These nonsensical doomsday prophecies will turn out to be false as they always are. The SJW lot aren't gonna turn games into bland, cookie cutter special snow flake simulators, the GG lot aren't going to turn gaming into a all male wasteland and whatever hyperbolic nonsense you dream up isn't gonna happen either.

But I can see whichever "side" that "loses" being ostracised. For all the talk of ethics and being against harassment gamers of a lot of stripes love to abandon both when the mood strikes them. And it's always justified because their "side" couldn't possibly be wrong now could it?

 

[Someone Depressing]

Butthurt, butthurt, more idiots having a bitchfight on Twitter, and some stuff will change, what with videogames gaining legitimacy as an art for and all that jazz.

Whether or not it's for the good is the gaming community's decision. And you know what the gaming community's like.

 

[Pete Oddly]

Gaming will continue to evolve as an art form, as it always has, and it will only get better. I'd say the biggest impact gaming will feel is when the continued bloating of AAA budgets becomes unsustainable and we see some negative fallout come from that. Other than that, the medium will continue to mature, and we will see all sorts of new narratives from all sorts of different perspectives, as well as shiny new gameplay mechanics to engage us.

Even though, as we've seen with this whole gamergate clustermug, there are aggressive and vocal nincompoops who will mire progress in uselessly prejudiced rhetoric, their input rarely does anything more than galvanize the resolve of the rational folks who strive for positive change in the medium.

 

[Dizchu]

In relation to Gamergate, what we will most likely end up with is:

- A few journalists getting fired (Gawker have been EXTREMELY problematic and are tech's equivalent of TMZ at this point)
- A few half-apologies (already happened, will probably be a few more)
- Even more bitter resentment within the "SJW" and "anti-feminist" camps
- Certain websites will use the whole scandal as vindication for their beliefs, whether they're "SJW" or "anti-feminist"
- More gender-related opinion pieces (good and bad)
- Much greater skepticism when it comes to games media
- Much greater awareness of political positions expressed in game design (whether appropriate or inappropriate)
- HOPEFULLY more hesitation from certain websites before publishing complete nonsense
- UNFORTUNATELY right-wing reactionaries will probably gain more of an audience because of aforementioned skepticism. Kinda like how UKIP are getting votes from people that distrust the main parties here in the UK despite their beliefs not being nearly as right-wing as UKIP's

Just some speculation. I think good and bad will come from this. All I can say is that I am glad that SOMETHING happened to shake things up a little, though like Occupy Wall Street, Gamergate won't achieve any goals apart from "awareness".

NOTE: I use "SJW" to refer to certain sensationalist types of social justice, which instead of wanting to solve problems use those problems to write vapid opinion pieces and "clickbait".

 

[MHR]

Nobody votes with their wallets. EA still makes a mass murder truckload of money. Sites will still post pandering and paid-for reviews, and people will still read them. People will be tiptoeing around anything political more than they already are, but that's been the trend for decades. And there will still be Twitter rants about the same old tired shit from popular figures in the years ahead.

War never changes.

 

[Little Gray]

Nothing'll change. Until those halfwits who're bothering to get involved in the whole "gamergate"-discussion are prapared to actually vote with their wallets, thigns are going in the direction that it always has, for the better.

It's interesting how people think something'll change just because a bunch of monkeys have a slapfight on twitter, jesus christ.

That and that it is such a small amount that they would not make a difference. The only real difference it could have is that developers may try and distance themselves further from the community and listen less.

 

[SUPA FRANKY]

You know, tbh, no one really cares about Gamergate outside the primary gaming media. I've never even met anyone who knows about this stuff in real life.

So no, nothings really going to change.

 

[JoshuaNorton]

Why should Gamergate have influence on games? The thing was about journalism!
I'm one of those people who maintain that this entire thing blew up because of the way gaming journalism treats gamers.
For me, the way this played out was:
Zoe Quinn makes false claims of harassment against Wizardchan. She may or may not have been receiving phone calls but those definitely came not from Wizardchan, which is a board for sufferers of social anxiety. They wouldn't be calling anybody much less a girl. Quinn made a dubious connection to them as leap of faith because an anonymous guy tipped her off at negative posting about her game on that board.
Now, here's the point where it all turned to Gamergate. She somehow made the gaming press write about her being harassed oh so badly for making her terrible game Depression Quest. For some reason the writers picked it up eagerly and wrote about some nobody (yep, nobody knew her before all that) getting harassed by Wizardchan due to misogyny. No fact checking was done whatsoever. They took her word for it. Surprise, surprise all the unwarranted attention let to her success. And also the media managed to stir up a torch and pitchfork mob against Wizardchan who was innocent in all of this.
That is the breach of ethics everybody is talking about. Journalist blew up the harassment claims way out of proportion and pinned it on somebody innocent entirely by word of Zoe Quinn.
Months after it all comes out and of course they all deny responsibility. They deny it so bad that they're creating a smokes and mirrors campaign where they allege that Gamergate is not about them having fucked up but it really is about gamers being misogynist! The fuck, right?! They desperately shift the focus on the harassment to siphon all attention away from themselves. "Hey look, it's not about us; Anita Sarkeesian got another death threat!"
What has their counterargument been? The charge against them was that they ran biased articles representing only one side, failing to verify any of the claims and passing off her story as fact. The answer to that? "Anybody who thinks this is about ethics in journalism has been rused. It really is about the rampant harassment. Really, you can trust us, if we tell you that we are not responsible at all. Have we ever lied to you?"
Well, a few did acknowledge that they screwed up. The Escapist of course. And I'm forever thankful for that.

So, why should any of that affect games? It should affect the gaming press of all things.
I wish they'd rethink their policy on reports of harassment. When they do, they should post all tweets in question along with the story, so that readers themselves can make up their opinion whether the claims of harassment/threats were really justified.

 

[Something Amyss]

No fact checking was done whatsoever. They took her word for it. Surprise, surprise all the unwarranted attention let to her success.

Weird, that sounds very similar to what Gamergate did. To Quinn, no less.

I guess two wrongs make a right or something? I don't know. That's sort of what I take away from this. Bad people calling bad people bad people while refusing to rectify their own bad behaviour.