Current Events > I don't even understand what Gamergate was about

(+) Yeah! (+)

Mal_Fet posted...

Darmik posted...

Mal_Fet posted...

Esrac posted...

I'm sympathetic to Gamergate and have defended them on occasion and I would tell you the "sex for review" claim was inaccurate.

I didn't even say the allegation was accurate

Mal_Fet posted...

Yes, he really did write a rave review for her dumb depression game

This crap is exactly why Gamergate got a lot of shit. So much misinformation was spread around as fact. The actual motive of the outrage was obvious to anyone who did a little bit of research.

https://archive.is/NeJis

He calls her game a "powerful Twine darling". It's one of the three games he specifically recommends among fifty others.

That's hardly a raving review.
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Darmik posted...

And do you honestly think those three words justified the movement?

No, but all the other stuff I pointed out did.

Prestoff posted...

That's hardly a raving review.

When hers is the one game among fifty (undoubtedly better) other games that he gives a compliment to, and the title of the article itself is a reference to her game, I would say it is.
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It was this really weird situation where a bunch of people were just shouting past each other about things that were only somewhat related.

A story broke out that had some implications about gaming journalism "ethics." So a shit-ton of people used sexism and alt-right fuckery to try and get their point across. This, in turn, caused gaming journalists to focus on the rampant outbreak of misogynistic stupidity blasting all over the nerd havens of the internet. Not addressing the issue the gamer-gaters were really revved up about, GGers got really upset and just dialed the sexism thing to 11.

And this just repeated for like a year.

I think a raving review would be an actual review that is praising it and not just a list of games that the journalist thinks is good.
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Gaming journalism is serious business so a group of nerds harassed people they thought had violated such a sacred thing

Mal_Fet posted...

No, but all the other stuff I pointed out did.

There is nothing else. You apparently consider any response to this a deflection despite your narrative being completely false.

First it was the lead editor of Kotaku that slept with her and gave the game a positive review.

We have now established he was not the lead editor and there was no review. So now go ahead and check the date of the affair.

Do you honestly think an article on RockPaperShotgun that mentioned a free browser game is the most pressing issue of corruption in gaming press? Just have that in mind while you go ahead and look into the sexual history of a developer and writer.
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They targeted gamers.

Gamers.

We're a group of people who will sit for hours, days, even weeks on end performing some of the hardest, most mentally demanding tasks. Over, and over, and over all for nothing more than a little digital token saying we did.

We'll punish our selfs doing things others would consider torture, because we think it's fun.

We'll spend most if not all of our free time min maxing the stats of a fictional character all to draw out a single extra point of damage per second.

Many of us have made careers out of doing just these things: slogging through the grind, all day, the same quests over and over, hundreds of times to the point where we know evety little detail such that some have attained such gamer nirvana that they can literally play these games blindfolded.

Do these people have any idea how many controllers have been smashed, systems over heated, disks and carts destroyed 8n frustration? All to latter be referred to as bragging rights?

These people honestly think this is a battle they can win? They take our media? We're already building a new one without them. They take our devs? Gamers aren't shy about throwing their money else where, or even making the games our selves. They think calling us racist, mysoginistic, rape apologists is going to change us? We've been called worse things by prepubescent 10 year olds with a shitty head set. They picked a fight against a group that's already grown desensitized to their strategies and methods. Who enjoy the battle of attrition they've threatened us with. Who take it as a challange when they tell us we no longer matter. Our obsession with proving we can after being told we can't is so deeply ingrained from years of dealing with big brothers/sisters and friends laughing at how pathetic we used to be that proving you people wrong has become a very real need; a honed reflex.

Gamers are competative, hard core, by nature. We love a challange. The worst thing you did in all of this was to challange us. You're not special, you're not original, you're not the first; this is just another boss fight.
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Darmik posted...

There is nothing else.

Idc if you agree with the points I mentioned, but they do exist whether you like it or not.

Reread post 32.

Darmik posted...

We have now established he was not the lead editor and there was no review. So now go ahead and check the date of the affair.

This is you hemming and hawwing over details. Yes he wasn't the editor, but he was a major writer at Kotaku. And though his praise of Depression Quest was not in a dedicated article to it, he did specifically praise it among a list of fifty other games, and even named the title of his article after the game itself.

As for the affair business, I specifically point out that the accuracy of the claim is dubious. Stop whining over nothing.
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Apparently getting the details over the entire scandal right is hemming and hawing.

Who cares if the claim is accurate as long as it gets results right? At least your honest about it.
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Darmik posted...

Apparently getting the details over the entire scandal right

I said "editor" instead of "writer"

Clearly, that changes everything.
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You said

Then it was revealed that Zoe Quinn, a mediocre video game developer who was endlessly praised by these same poser video game journalists, was sleeping with the head editor of Kotaku whom wrote one of her games a glowing review. It might have been true, it might not have been true, but it made a lot of sense that these wannabe journalists were on the take.

Considering there was no review and that they slept together months after that article then yeah it does change everything.

As I said it doesn't matter if it was accurate. All it mattered was that people believed it. That's why this fake narrative is still being spewed out years later.
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Darmik posted...

Considering there was no review

There was. I linked to it. He recommended her game among fifty others on Steam. It doesn't matter that the article isn't specifically dedicated to it; the title of the review is a reference to her game and hers it the only game he specifically compliments.

You're getting real bent out of shape about a part of GG that I don't even say was the main reason behind it. All it was was the straw that broke the camel's back.
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Darmik, I know we don't agree about Gamergate, but I almost have to applaud your patience on dealing with Mal_fet's shtick.
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Mal_Fet posted...

There was. I linked to it. He recommended her game among fifty others on Steam. It doesn't matter that the article isn't specifically dedicated to it; the title of the review is a reference to her game and hers it the only game he specifically compliments.

You seriously don't consider this disingenuous? Apparently you only need three word's for a glowing review. Okay.

Mal_Fet posted...

You're getting real bent out of shape about a part of GG that I don't even say was the main reason behind it. All it was was the straw that broke the camel's back.

And the straw was feminism in gaming. Most of which was outrage over Anita Sarkeesian. It was a culture war. Plain and simple. Which again is totally why you don't care about making disingenuous claims about what the catalyst was. You outright admit that you don't really care.
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Darmik posted...

You seriously don't consider this disingenuous? Apparently you only need three word's for a glowing review. Okay.

If I used the words "glowing reccomendation" instead, would you still be this assblasted over this
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It was (still is?) a culture war. It really started with my Bonita Anita and her tropes vs. Women, but the whole thing was set off with the Zoe Quinn scandal, sort of like WW1 and Gavrillo Princip.

Unfortunately, it radicalized a lot of gamers who I think up until that point were pretty checked out of politics or if anything liberal since up until then it was conservatives who attacked games and gamers.
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Esrac posted...

Darmik, I know we don't agree about Gamergate, but I almost have to applaud your patience on dealing with Mal_fet's shtick.

I've never had an issue with our disagreements over this. Even though we disagree you're still overall knowledgeable about the situation and you're chill to debate with. We just came to different conclusions. Which is totally okay.

It would help the internet in general if people were actually accurate with their info. So many knee-jerk reactions to incomplete info. So when I see outright incorrect info from people like Mal I still have to correct it.

Overall I'm over it honestly. Barely anyone involved in it is even relevant these days. Most of the extreme people seem to have moved onto politics in general.
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Mal_Fet posted...

Darmik posted...

You seriously don't consider this disingenuous? Apparently you only need three word's for a glowing review. Okay.

If I used the words "glowing reccomendation" instead, would you still be this assblasted over this

Dude correcting you because you were wrong doesn't mean I'm assblasting over it.

And no. Because again nothing about that initial claim is correct.

If your claim was;
Nathan Greyson who sometimes wrote for Kotaku and RockPaperShotgun mentioned Depression Quest (a free browser game) in an article that listed 50 games on RockPaperShotgun. Zoe Quinn was the developer. A few months later Quinn's ex-boyfriend claimed that they had an affair (along with a few others in the industry who as far as know haven't covered Depression Quest) after this article was published. This may imply a conflict of interest. This lead to the Quinnspiracy movement. A few days later actor Adam Baldwin tweeted #Gamergate and the movement was born.

Then yeah that's accurate.
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Im not sure why the facts or the actual events matter.
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People questioned the ethics of journalist because they had personal relationships with their subjects ?

That's basically impossible to avoid in niche markets.

It happened to me with sneaker reporting you meet the same people at the same events for years it's impossible not to.
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What I still don't get is how people couldn't really see the transparency of the whole thing. If ethics in journalism was the big issue, then the bad guys are the AAA publishers who essentially have journalists and devs in a stranglehold, yet GamerGate focused all its rage on some 5-8 women (calling them "literally who" etc to completely dehumanize them) and the journalists who spoke up for them.
It was from the very start a war on political correctness and progressivism, and that's why Bannon had such a hard-on for it.
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scar the 1 posted...

What I still don't get is how people couldn't really see the transparency of the whole thing. If ethics in journalism was the big issue, then the bad guys are the AAA publishers who essentially have journalists and devs in a stranglehold, yet GamerGate focused all its rage on some 5-8 women (calling them "literally who" etc to completely dehumanize them) and the journalists who spoke up for them.
It was from the very start a war on political correctness and progressivism, and that's why Bannon had such a hard-on for it.

Literally Who wasn't a dehumanization effort. It was an attempt to communicate that Zoe Quinn, etc were a footnote that they wanted to move on from. Of course, that doesn't mean very much in such a loosely affiliated group of mostly anonymous individuals with no actual leadership and little organization. It doesn't stop individual Gamergaters from talking about Quinn, Sarkeesian, etc. whenever they want to.

The ethics in journalism is a part of it. But, based on my lurking KiA, current Gamergate is basically one part concern for ethical journalism, two parts talking about censorship and how much it sucks, three parts talking about who's still talking about Gamergate, and four parts calling out, making fun of, complaining about, or otherwise talking about sjws/regressives/etc. especially in the media, academia, or politics.

If you want to call them out for waving the banner of ethics in journalism when they mostly just want to bitch about sjws, that's pretty fair. But they aren't the alt-right hate campaign against women and minorities in gaming that ushered in a Trump presidency and a new Fourth Reich. That characterization is a boogeyman.
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Esrac posted...

scar the 1 posted...

What I still don't get is how people couldn't really see the transparency of the whole thing. If ethics in journalism was the big issue, then the bad guys are the AAA publishers who essentially have journalists and devs in a stranglehold, yet GamerGate focused all its rage on some 5-8 women (calling them "literally who" etc to completely dehumanize them) and the journalists who spoke up for them.
It was from the very start a war on political correctness and progressivism, and that's why Bannon had such a hard-on for it.

Literally Who wasn't a dehumanization effort. It was an attempt to communicate that Zoe Quinn, etc were a footnote that they wanted to move on from. Of course, that doesn't mean very much in such a loosely affiliated group of mostly anonymous individuals with no actual leadership and little organization. It doesn't stop individual Gamergaters from talking about Quinn, Sarkeesian, etc. whenever they want to.

The ethics in journalism is a part of it. But, based on my lurking KiA, current Gamergate is basically one part concern for ethical journalism, two parts talking about censorship and how much it sucks, three parts talking about who's still talking about Gamergate, and four parts calling out, making fun of, complaining about, or otherwise talking about sjws/regressives/etc. especially in the media, academia, or politics.

If you want to call them out for waving the banner of ethics in journalism when they mostly just want to bitch about sjws, that's pretty fair. But they aren't the alt-right hate campaign against women and minorities in gaming that ushered in a Trump presidency and a new Fourth Reich. That characterization is a boogeyman.

About the dehumanization, it might not be intended, but it definitely is the effect. I saw a good video about that, if you'd be interested. It's a guy who does critical analysis on the "text" of GamerGate as if it were a movie or a book or something. You might not agree with all his conclusions, and I don't know how accurate his knowledge of the matter was, but he's good at analysis.

As for the alt-right hate campaign boogeyman, I'm inclined to agree and disagree. I know a lot of people who don't subscribe to the ideology of alt-rightism who were still sympathetic to GamerGate. However there's no doubt in my mind that alt-right minds like Bannon aimed to benefit as much as possible from this hatred of progressivism and political correctness.
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scar the 1 posted...

Esrac posted...

scar the 1 posted...

What I still don't get is how people couldn't really see the transparency of the whole thing. If ethics in journalism was the big issue, then the bad guys are the AAA publishers who essentially have journalists and devs in a stranglehold, yet GamerGate focused all its rage on some 5-8 women (calling them "literally who" etc to completely dehumanize them) and the journalists who spoke up for them.
It was from the very start a war on political correctness and progressivism, and that's why Bannon had such a hard-on for it.

Literally Who wasn't a dehumanization effort. It was an attempt to communicate that Zoe Quinn, etc were a footnote that they wanted to move on from. Of course, that doesn't mean very much in such a loosely affiliated group of mostly anonymous individuals with no actual leadership and little organization. It doesn't stop individual Gamergaters from talking about Quinn, Sarkeesian, etc. whenever they want to.

The ethics in journalism is a part of it. But, based on my lurking KiA, current Gamergate is basically one part concern for ethical journalism, two parts talking about censorship and how much it sucks, three parts talking about who's still talking about Gamergate, and four parts calling out, making fun of, complaining about, or otherwise talking about sjws/regressives/etc. especially in the media, academia, or politics.

If you want to call them out for waving the banner of ethics in journalism when they mostly just want to bitch about sjws, that's pretty fair. But they aren't the alt-right hate campaign against women and minorities in gaming that ushered in a Trump presidency and a new Fourth Reich. That characterization is a boogeyman.

About the dehumanization, it might not be intended, but it definitely is the effect. I saw a good video about that, if you'd be interested. It's a guy who does critical analysis on the "text" of GamerGate as if it were a movie or a book or something. You might not agree with all his conclusions, and I don't know how accurate his knowledge of the matter was, but he's good at analysis.

As for the alt-right hate campaign boogeyman, I'm inclined to agree and disagree. I know a lot of people who don't subscribe to the ideology of alt-rightism who were still sympathetic to GamerGate. However there's no doubt in my mind that alt-right minds like Bannon aimed to benefit as much as possible from this hatred of progressivism and political correctness.

I don't know how effective treating a social movement, if you can call GG that, like a book or movie is. I'd be concerned they would let their own preconceptions influence their analysis in ways that are unfair to the subject, especially when Gamergate has been (I think sometimes unfairly) maligned. But I can't fairly comment further when I have no idea who's content you're talking about.

I don't know what value Banon actually got out of Gamergate. I do know that Gamergaters aren't always especially fond of Breitbart and I've seen posts on KiA shitting on right wing sources like Breitbart and Gateway Pundit. If I understand KiA's posting rules correctly, both of those sources are on a black list (alongside names like Infowars, Daily Stormer, etc.) and direct links are either entirely disallowed or require special mod approval. Archived links seem to be okay though. A worthy criticism is having a strong anti-gg stance seems to be enough to merit a spot on the blacklist.

There are people with conservative, and maybe even alt-right, leanings in Gamergate; I think that is to be expected in such a loosely affiliated group with no vetting process or real barrier to entry, but I wouldn't say Gamergate on the whole is alt-right or particularly right wing.
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I'll let you decide for yourself, if you're up for watching a 20 min analysis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VtjZHC5Qyk

Like I said, I enjoy his content and think he's really good at analysis. But he's very critical and dismissive IIRC so I'm not sure you'll agree with him :)
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scar the 1 posted...

I'll let you decide for yourself, if you're up for watching a 20 min analysis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VtjZHC5Qyk

Like I said, I enjoy his content and think he's really good at analysis. But he's very critical and dismissive IIRC so I'm not sure you'll agree with him :)

Oh, Dan Olson. I've heard his name a couple times on KiA, but haven't looked into him specifically. I do know he's anti-gamergate. I admit, that'd probably have me wary, since I already know I'm not likely to agree with his assessment. The length doesn't bother me, 20 minutes isn't very long.

I think some Gamergaters have already posted videos and articles countering his analysis, but I haven't watched any at this point, so I can't vouch for their content.

I may try to watch it later, but for now I need to go to bed. Then work when I get up, so it could be a while.
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Oh ok, I didn't know his name (or that he was somehow well-known). I can see how some of his other videos might also irk people, since he talks about how Fight Club deals with toxic masculinity and he slams Evangelion fans pretty hard in his End of Evangelion review.
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scar the 1 posted...

Oh ok, I didn't know his name (or that he was somehow well-known). I can see how some of his other videos might also irk people, since he talks about how Fight Club deals with toxic masculinity and he slams Evangelion fans pretty hard in his End of Evangelion review.

Well, doesn't he sound like a joy to be around.
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It was about Ethics in gaming journalism and then a few garbage stains masquerading as humans like Anita Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu and to some extent Zoe Quinn decided to throw everyone involved under the boss to make a name of victimhood out of it for themselves.

Gamergate is what happened when a rumor hit the Internet, and the Internet wasn't allowed to discuss it.
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Esrac posted...

scar the 1 posted...

Oh ok, I didn't know his name (or that he was somehow well-known). I can see how some of his other videos might also irk people, since he talks about how Fight Club deals with toxic masculinity and he slams Evangelion fans pretty hard in his End of Evangelion review.

Well, doesn't he sound like a joy to be around.

He kinda does, IMO. It's not like his entire brand is progressivism. He does a lot of reviews of films, music, etc, and is really good at explaining the theory that motivates his analyses.
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It was a gate of gamers
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Dan Olson's gamergate analysis assumes his initial position is right. There's no effort to challenge the ideas that circulate around the anti-GG sites, just regurgitation of it. He says Literally Who is dehumanizing because that's what paints the worst picture of GG, even though there's no reason to assume that other than wanting to paint the worst picture of GG. Nobody on the GG-side has ever claimed LW is used as another other than a quicktongue way of expressing "this is irrelevant."

Olson clearly has an image of what GG is (EI: A harassment campaign) and he's laying out the evidence in a mosaic that supports their narrative rather than analyzing the pieces from every angle and playing them as they fall.

Esrac posted...

If you want to call them out for waving the banner of ethics in journalism when they mostly just want to b**** about sjws, that's pretty fair. But they aren't the alt-right hate campaign against women and minorities in gaming that ushered in a Trump presidency and a new Fourth Reich. That characterization is a boogeyman.

No. GamerGate was a direct access point to the alt-right for young white men who previously skewed moderate or even liberal, but could be radicalized by appeals to their "disenfranchisement" at the hands of feminism and political correctness. The alt-right itself touts this. Consider the Normie's Guide to the Alt-Right which was featured on the Daily Stormer, https://katana17.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/the-daily-stormer-a-normies-guide-to-the-alt-right/

Darmik posted...

Dude correcting you because you were wrong doesn't mean I'm assblasting over it.

Going on a dozen-post tirade because you don't like that I called an article that is highly complimentary of Zoe's game a "review" is what I would call assblasted, yes.

Darmik posted...

And no. Because again nothing about that initial claim is correct.

Only thing I got wrong is that he's an editor. I did not say that the affair ordeal was a real.

Stop being so assblasted over nothing.
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Darmik posted...

The game was also free. Which everybody fails to mention for some reason. Probably because that would ruin the corruption narrative a bit.

Because it was never about money. How hard is that to understand?

Ever watch Teen Titans? The original not Go? You know that episode where Robin asked Deathstroke what he was promised and speculated that it was money or power? What was Deathstroke's answer?

"but muh free gaim!" For fucks sake, not everything is about money.
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