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About LinkBacksHas anyone been paying attention to the GamerGate controversy? What are your thoughts on it?
Has anyone been paying attention to the GamerGate controversy? What are your thoughts on it?
You might have to bring us up to date on that, it sounds like something I might want to know about, but I haven't come across anything about it.
Some game journalist I've never heard of was publicly accused of cheating on her boyfriend/hubby by sleeping with five notable figures in the gaming industry. Cue massive public scandal, controversy, 4Chan posts and all manner of mess...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoe_Quinn
This is the video which everyone seems to link to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km3DZQp0StE
I don't care much for things like this, but this seems to uncovering some fairly serious corruption by certain journalists.
Originally Posted by Saracen
You got a couple of things the wrong way round there, Ttaskmaster.
So, "gamergate".
About 3 weeks ago, a guy named Eron Gjoni posted a long rambling account of how his ex girlfriend did him wrong, cheated on him, etc. The accusations made by Gjoni were that his girlfriend, an indie game developer, received positive coverage from various blogs as a result of her sleeping with the writers covering her games (especially the free browser game Depression Quest, for which she is best known).
"Gamers" were outraged, and immediately began a witch hunt, citing concerns over ethics in the game industry, to track down everyone involved with developer Zoe Quinn, and any possible relationships those journalists might have with others, etc. Twitter turned into a vicious rape-and-death-threat party, and anyone trying to defend her was attacked in return. Controversial indie developer Phil Fish was "doxxed" by outraged gamers (every possible piece of personal information they could hack their way into obtaining was obtained), and announced he was quitting the games industry in response (again). On top of the doxxing already done of Quinn, e.g. spreading nude pics around.
In response, a number of the besieged game journalists and bloggers wrote a few articles along the lines of "the 'gamers' label is meaningless these days anyway, when every retirement home has a Wii and every smartphone has Angry Birds - those clinging to the badge today are trying to associate themselves with the sexist people attacking Zoe Quinn". These articles were mostly ignored until Leigh Alexander did one for Gamasutra, when suddenly it was the biggest ethical problem of our times.
Aaaaand around the time this was happening, pop culture critic Anita Sarkeesian published the latest in her video series drawing attention to patterns of sexist themes in games. The "gamers" on the Internet hate Sarkeesian, so that set her off even more. The "I'm looking at your house, and am going to murder-rape you" messages drove her from her home.
Currently, #gamergate is the leftovers of that spat - gamers insisting that every criticism of the games industry is wrong and forbidden, mostly targeted at women or their allies, all under the banner of "ethics".
cptwhite_uk (05-09-2014),Smudger (22-10-2014)
thanks for the explanation directhex. from what little i've heard most people are using the rumours as an excuse to be sexist which is apparently uncovering a new can of worms within the gaming industry. glad i keep to myself when it comes to gaming
OP since you've started this discussion perhaps it would be prudent to share your thoughts on the matter
Last edited by Marenghi; 04-09-2014 at 01:57 PM.
Ooops sorry, this became a double post when I edited it.
Last edited by KeyboardDemon; 04-09-2014 at 04:00 PM.
As I was watching the video at around 3:15 the InternetAristocrat asks the questions who in the gaming press do I trust for reviews? Well my answer was nobody, I make my buying decisions based on the opinions of people I trust, on gameplay videos via Youtube, gamer reviews on Steam and recommendations from people I know and those that I play games with online. I don't trust journalists that put up reviews on the same sites that make revenue from the companies that publish the products that they are reviewing. Once I had answered that question I lost interest in find out any more about this controversy.
Not surprising. I didn't pay any attention to this, have never heard of anyone involved and even had to Google Quinn's name!
Beyond forum posts, I haven't read any 'gaming journalism' publications since Your Sinclair magazine...
I either listen to what my friends and my fellow forumites say having played the game themselves, or just blow cash on something with a cool trailer and usually regret it afterward!
Oh yeah, that too. That's sometimes prompted me to hit the buy button on a website or too, usually with AAA titles though.I either listen to what my friends and my fellow forumites say having played the game themselves, or just blow cash on something with a cool trailer and usually regret it afterward!
From what I can tell, it's a clash of class A muppets on both sides - I'm in the same boat.
Clearly this is about ethics
I'm not claiming it is. But there certainly seems to be some evidence that some journos have been a bit naughty.
As for the screenshot, it could be as fabricated as many of the other things flying around in this sorry saga (from either 'side'). The only thing that I find mildly interesting is any potential naughtiness with reviewers not doing their job properly. I've no interest in ZQ and who said what to who.
But that's a fabricated excuse. That's the point. Are some publications bought and sold by big publishers? YES. Game sites and mags depend on ad revenue from AAA game publishers to keep the lights on. There are plenty of examples of sites giving higher scores due to publisher demands - or being punished for not giving in to publisher demands, or punishing individual reviewers for not following the revenue-driven demands of the advertising department. See Jeff Gerstmann's firing from Gamespot.
But none of that is part of #GamerGate. None of the "enraged" gamers give a **** about the real ethical problem in games journalism. They never gave a **** about, say, Anthony Burch being a Destructoid writer then Borderlands 2 getting reviewed by his former co-workers. Not a problem, not interesting. They're focused on a much more important problem - that indie developers might be friends with journalists in some capacity. A reviewer funded Double Fine's Kickstarter? ETHICAL BREACH! BEGIN HARASSMENT CAMPAIGN! (Nothing to do with Tim Schafer's support of female indies and journos being harrassed). Someone liked a freeware text adventure about mental health? THEY MUST BE SLEEPING WITH THE DEVELOPER! (Not that such problems ever come up with AAA DudeBro Shooters. Only indie devs by women or people who agree with women).
#GamerGate has nothing to do with drawing attention to actual ethical problems with the games industry - but it's been intentionally framed in such a way, by the 4chan folks coming up with the battle plan (along with related plans like #NotMyShield), that people who aren't invested enough to give a **** still end up supporting their harassment campaigns, largely by accident, exactly as you have done. "Huh, this video points out some clear ethical breaches, I support their cause"
It's a dog whistle. The 4channers can't say "support our campaign to get women out of the games industry", but they can say "support our campaign to get ethical breaches out of the games industry", focused 100% on female devs and journos and their allies.
kompukare (30-09-2014)
Basically some sexist, immature, (most likely) virgin, 15-25 year old bedroom hackers with personality and hygiene issues thought it might fun to destroy someone online for no other reason than they can. Pathetic.
While I entirely understand that, there's not necessarily any conflict. Not if the organisation concerned is professional.
My experience is with mainstream print media (though they all have websites, of course) and in 20 years of writing for many different companies, not once did I experience either editors materially changing my (freelance) reviews, nor did I ever, at any point, exchange so much as a "good morning" with anyone on the advertising side of the company. Yet, if I'm writing a review of a product from MS, Adobe, Dell, nVidia, etc, it's almost certain there'll be adverts from them.
To my mind, the ONLY way to trust any reviewer, web or print, is to get a feel, over a period of time, for whether that individual produces reviews which, having used a product (game or whatever) you conclude the review was competent, fair and balanced.
It's also worth pointing out that as a freelancer, I could have been taking backhanders all over the place and it wouldn't correlate to advertising. Of coursr, I wasn't, because at least in those days of "proper" magazine publishers, it'd soon become apparent if my reviews didn't broadly coincide with the common thrust, and then I could kiss future commissions from just about any computer publisher goodbye, and start looking for a new way to make a living.
I'm not suggesting you should trust reviews in a publication that also acceprs advertising. Merely than it's not a very good criteria to judge by, if for no other reason that lack of advertising doesn't mean lack of other inducements.
As for this Gamergate thing, I don't know anything about it, or much care, so I don't really have an opinion.
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