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Thoughts on the Zoe Quinn controversy, "Gamergate", the "death of gamer culture", etc.
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Comments
Right, none of GG's actions make any sense if their goal is actually to improve games journalism. On the other hand, they make perfect sense if the goal is to drive uppity women out of the industry.
It seems to me that the aim of reactionary-types isn't to intimidate women specifically, but to target the social commentary (and those who produce it), as a backlash against the criticism of the games they like (which I am pretty sure are biased toward certain types of games -- and while I have no solid proof, I can pretty much bet money on it being those games that are known for being more stereotypically violent or having "edgy" content, as exemplified by such series as the Grand Theft Auto games).
It just so happens that a number of the people offering such social commentary are indeed women, in part because the criticism is that games (or at least those games that these reactionaries like) present features that demean women.
Of course, sometimes the criticisms are a little spurious, and reactionaries will of course jump on those to further try to delegitimize this strain of criticism, and those critics. (I'm using the terms "critic" and "criticism" narrowly here, to refer to this commentary/complaint about games, NOT in the meaning as in "film critic".)
But basically, these reactionaries believe these criticisms to be unfounded (even the ones that aren't spurious), and would really rather they stop (trying to?) make them feel or look bad about the games they're playing. Basically, they feel a similar righteous indignation as they did against the likes of Jack Thompson. Except this time, their "opponents" are actually fellow gamers.
And in their reaction, they just draw upon the typical internet baseline of decency (or lack thereof), which is essentially the trash-talking we see in games. And since the targets are frequently women, the trash-talking is frequently misogynistic. And then you get those people who just get so caught up in the movement they feel justified in doxxing, threatening rape, and threatening murder.
But yeah, this isn't really new. If anything, what's new is the rise of indie development and people trying out new things and designing new styles of games. Heck, people decrying "faggy/pretentious art games" predates #GamerGate too. There's been this undercurrent of reactionaryism from these types of fans, who feel very invested in the status quo. (And probably some of them -- though definitely not all -- are invested because videogames were a more accepting medium when they couldn't find that acceptance elsewhere.) And that status quo also happens to be a predominantly teen/young-adult male playerbase demographic. So, between female commentators criticizing their hobby, female game designers getting into the industry, the rise of "(filthy) casuals", and to some extent even the rise of indie game development as a whole -- you just have a confluence of waves of change hitting these reactionaries, and so they're lashing out against them.
With their usual bad behavior of course. As I said, trash-talking, doxxing, rape and death threats, etc..
Zoe Quinn just happens to be a very convenient target, in part because she's not perfect, and has dirt on her from various other situations. Anita Sarkeesian is another, in part because she isn't perfect either, and kinda opines poorly sometimes.
Now, if you want to actually characters the whole of #GamerGate, that's basically an unruly mob. There are people doing all sorts of things. You have people who legitimately want to fix game journalism ethics, you have people who are co-opting the movement for political purposes, you have the basic reactionary types I mentioned, you have internet troublemakers looking for something to do, and more. So, every criticism against #GamerGate can be simultaneously true and false, depending on whom you're referring to. But mobs always have their troublemakers, and that's what people outside that label see most prominently because they are the most disruptive and obnoxious elements.
One irony is that, if anything, I should be the ultra-reactionary in the room. Given that I still play 2D games, and I've never liked the original change that brought along and catered to this group of trash-talking teen guys in the first place. Heh. Well, given that I've been on the losing side of this change for probably over 15 years now...I wouldn't mind seeing these reactionaries squirm a bit.
As for the anti-GamerGate folks: once again, they're sort of a mob at this point. There are those people who are quite offended at the misogyny and generally offensive behavior of the obnoxious people in the GamerGate coalition. There are those people who just want it to go away, in part by banning the topic from being discussed on various sites. There are the "social justice warriors" who use the internet to express their zeal for social change, in sometimes misguided ways. And probably some others.
I don't doubt that some anti-GG people may have used ethically questionable tactics at some point. This is the internet, after all, and an-eye-for-an-eye is strong with any deskchair-and-internet-connection activism. However, misbehavior on the part of anyone is not itself relevant to the principles they aspire to -- whether anti-GG or pro-GG.
But while it may not be relevant, from a rational analysis perspective, they certainly are relevant from a social organizing perspective, thanks to humans not being entirely rational beings and having the great ability to associate things. And that's why I think it's best to cut off those associations with this controversy as much as possible.
To these people "videogames cause real world violence" and "videogames normalizes sexist behavior" are pretty much the same thing. Causation and Normalization are pretty similar looking to them, I can't blame them, I still don't understand the difference myself.
Slightly amusing:
Can we not do this? People opposing GamerGate are not organized. GamerGate is. And many anti-GamerGaters are forced into that position. The very fact that female developers are afraid to speak up lest they unleash the mob should alert anyone that the two sides are not equivalent, and I'm seriously getting tired of how casually people are treating this. While you try to play the balance game, real lives are being ruined.
This is the best thing.
^^ I never said the two mobs are equivalent in their effects.
One mob has a bunch of megaphones. The other is reputed to be carrying handguns.
Also, a clarification on the thing about indie devs in my last post:
I don't think that the GamerGate folks are anti-indie, actually.
What they are is against what they perceive as "outsiders" getting into the industry and changing it away from what they like it to be. This includes those people who make "art" games and "cell phone" games, for example. (Examples like Flappy Bird only give their point fuel.) Those people who openly espouse social justice principles are probably closest to that "art" group -- basically, to the reactionaries, trying to make games about something they're not about.
I'm going to go out on a limb a bit here and compare this perception of games to something like the "underbelly" of society. Basically, "crazy shit happens here, just walk away and pretend like you didn't see anything". But this is pretty much entirely contrary to the aspiration of making gaming more mainstream.
Then what is r/gamerghazi then? Also, how do you know "many female developers" are being threatened, or is just a feeling you have? Game developers must tow the SJW narrative because "you're either with us or against us", is that supposed to be fair? If anything, the absolute shit level reporting by gaming and news media are perpetuating the very thing they accuse GG of, scaring women out of the industry.
Also, what Glenn said.
Looking in retrospect, the fuss over Gone Home looks like the prelude to what's going on now.
I'm not familiar with this. Could you elaborate?
Gone Home is a game that's basically a long corridor where you get to explore your old home while nobody is there, and you progress the story by looking at stuff from your sister's diary scattered around the house. It's incredibly linear and has almost no replay value. It's less about you as the player and more about the coming of age story of your sister, the ghost in all this story. It drew ire from people for being lauded as a great game while many felt it wasn't really a game do to it's lack of win/lose state or any meaningful choice.
As best as I recall the short version of the outrage is that Gone Home is not a video game and how dare it try to market itself as such. I do not agree that Gone Home is a non-game, but I do agree that it is a prelude to GG. By applying the non-game attitude to Depression Quest, I've can see the logic, based on a bunch of faulty assumptions, of the completely bullshit ethic complaints of GG.
^^ What is this I'm reading about
edit: ninja'd
That your sister is a lesbian is a spoiler for the player, so I left that out because half the punch of the game is that her coming of age is also her coming out story. I didn't want to spoil it for you.
I agree with the non-game argument though, not becuase I find Gone Home is bad or anything, but because games have win/lose states, if I am to accept the argument iti s a game, we have just redefined game to mean any interaction delivered through virtual simulations. Which is not necessarily the case.
Oh, sorry about asking about the spoiler. I put spoiler tags in my earlier post.
^^^ Actually, the "non-game" angle highlights another "wave" of discontent. I forgot that whole meme of calling stuff "walking simulators".
And that also reminds me that there was actually a pretty prevalent wave of discontent on Steam not too long ago, complaining about the profusion of new games on Steam that...well, as a group they don't really have a consistent definition aside from "don't look like what people expect video games to look like these days".
Various people used a variety of terms to describe them. "Walking simulators" was a popular meme, which made it into the tags system that was just debuted at around the same time, but other common terms used (not necessarily all at the same time) "casual", "indie", "retro", "cell phone", "cheap", "pixel", "2D", "8-bit", "1980s"/"80s", "simple", "basic", and so on. Steam had two programs giving pathways for indie devs to get on and sell their work on Steam at the time -- Greenlight and Early Access. Both of those, of course, got a lot of flak, and were the focus of the criticisms.
This issue got pretty big and resulted in such actions as TotalBiscuit's video famously complaining about the lack of curation on Steam, as well as the spats and Youtube DMCA takedowns of videos about The War Z (now known as Infestation: Survivor Stories) and Day One: Garry's Incident. Of course, it was also fed by some devs (such as the devs of those two games) allegedly being jerks about others' criticism of their work's quality (or lack thereof).
In fact, I suspect that part of the whole "OMG censorship" reaction to the GamerGate issue being banned on several forums may have had that sort of action in mind.
Anyway, around the same time, Steam debuted its user reviews system, and more recently produced a "curator" system (even referencing the term TotalBiscuit literally used to describe this, when he criticized Steam for a lack of "curation"). The latter seems to have received mixed reactions, though there are always some of those people who don't like the new features -- and heck, the reaction against it has also been mixed in with the new interface and the discontent directed at that.
^ Come to think of it, I wonder if there's some discontent for visual novels (which have long been the topic of a debate over whether they constitute games) being on Steam and also some anti-anime sentiment mixed into this. Though that's probably unlikely, aside from a handful of anti-weeb crusader types on Steam, as I don't recall noticing the anime fandom broadly taking one or the other side on GamerGate.
Visual Novels I find are games when they have win/lose states and meaningful choices. Depression Quest has choices, but as I only played one run can't make a statement on whether these choices do matter at the end. There is also a type of visual novel that Gone Home is similar to: The Kinetic Novel, it's basically the same text driven story with background but there are no meaningfull choices and are restricted to only having one path or route.
Regarding positive reviews, Danielle Reindeau one of the reviewers for Polygon, is part of Idle Thumbs podcast, the same podcast members of the development team behind Gone Home are part of. That was never disclosed, and in fact Deputy Reviews Editor Phillip Kollar said "”I feel confident that it didn’t have any bearing” when prompted about it. That's failure to disclose.
It's not something that's hard, just a sentence like "Hey I'm friends of the people who made this game". Done. Nothing hard about it.
I see.
Do you think this stuff happens because people are actively colluding, or because people are just negligent? Not Kollar's comment, but the original event.
Because I wonder if this is just like, the gaming press hasn't quite matured to have these sorts of standards to automatically "feel" that there's a problem when something like this arises. That's certainly a criticism I've heard of the gaming press before.
The more I observe, the more I feel this is at least 50/50 gaming press simply don't believe collusion to be a problem, because they see it as friends supporting friends and that's okay with them. The problem is when game devs or journalists who don't get coverage because they don't happen to be friends with certain gaming journalists are ignored and forced to find alternate means of promotion. When you're a small developer trying to push out his/her first game, coverage can mean the difference between failure and turning somewhat of a slight profit. Then again, that doesn't explain why certain members of gaming journalism went on tirades on twitter, so I'm thinking cluelessness towards professional ethics is only half the story.
Cluelessness is thinking "did a podcast together" is a fucking conflict of interest.
Also, question: Is it possible for male journalists to be unethical too or is having a vagina necessary for collusion?
(Just for the record: sorry guys, the thread moved a bit faster than I had anticipated. Fortunately the necessary explanation has been mostly presented without me around.)
All journalists are getting shit for collusion and slandering gamers. Where is it that says male journalists are exempt from criticism? I want to see it.
Also, this thought has been in the back of my mind now, if some of you are so adamant in thinking GG is a bunch of whiny gamers who have no valid point or goal, than why not convince the advertisers of that? This is a consumer revolt, so convincing your friends doesn't do anything. The advertisers are watching things unfold, which is why they're pulling out or letting ad contracts expire at the end of the year without renewal. The whole business of Adobe getting hounded by anti-GG for not advertising with Gawker when they never started to begin with does no favours for GG's opponents.
I'm quite certain nobody has literally said that, but actions speak louder than words. What male journalists has GG gone after with anything approaching the furor with which it attacks women who speak out? Particularly ones who it's gone after for "corruption" as opposed to, say, criticizing GamerGate.
A vocal minority bitching on Twitter does not a consumer revolt make.Is this about GG? I really like the art style and needed to post it somewhere: http://pepperonideluxe.tumblr.com/post/101061454652/a-comic-about-seagulls-if-you-feel-like-this
Mess big enough to earn a KnowYourMeme entry: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate
Ehh, KnowYourMeme frequently has a lot of smaller phenomenon. The pages are posted publicly for the internet to see while they are "being researched".
Well, yeah, I'm not trying to claim they're some sort of influential opinion-forming media, they just investigate internet phenomena like that one once it's big enough around the web. Figured they might be offering that concise round-up of all the events related to it that folks've been asking for.
Whenever I see someone claiming to be a "moderate" or speaking against "both sides" wrt G.Gate I have to laugh, because of the people I've seen who take up such a position, every single one has only ever spoken critically of GG's detractors, never in opposition of GG itself.