Poll of the Day > Explain GamerGate to me... without mentioning any ideologies or people.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Because I just want the facts.

And the only facts I remember were that "a" game dev sexed "a" game reviewer for better ratings... and that's it.
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It's about ethics in gaming journalism
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Someone had sex with reviewers for ratings and special treatment, the end, ok?
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Video games became very upset regarding female genitalia
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Mead posted...

Video games became very upset regarding female genitalia

There's not enough hard vag in video games. I think the hardest we got is a placenta in Binding of Isaac.
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Who cares? It was just something pointless and stupid. People looking for attention.

Lokarin posted...

Mead posted...

Video games became very upset regarding female genitalia

There's not enough hard vag in video games. I think the hardest we got is a placenta in Binding of Isaac.

Pre patch watch dogs 2 had some rock hard vagine when it was released
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Twitter bullshit that ended 4 years ago.
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feminism has something to do with it as well
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Femoids ruined gaming journalism forever
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JOExHIGASHI posted...

feminism has something to do with it as well

Oops_All_Berrys posted...

Femoids ruined gaming journalism forever

Well, that didn't take long
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shadowsword87 posted...

It's about ethics in gaming journalism

This has to score in the top 10% of "most pathetic sentences to ever exist"
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GanglyKhan posted...

shadowsword87 posted...

It's about ethics in gaming journalism

This has to score in the top 10% of "most pathetic sentences to ever exist"

If you take away the ideologues... is it ethical to sex your ratings up?
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Lokarin posted...

GanglyKhan posted...

shadowsword87 posted...

It's about ethics in gaming journalism

This has to score in the top 10% of "most pathetic sentences to ever exist"

If you take away the ideologues... is it ethical to sex your ratings up?

Depends on the field and circumstances.

Subtracting variables is less condusive to effectively arguing morals and ethics. Applying different issues and information changes how we come to a conclusion about it.
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shadowsword87 posted...

It's about ethics in gaming journalism

^Im leaning toward this.
Because it is pretty dumb to sex up a reviewer for ratings. like have faith in your own job skills.
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The core issue was that people in the gaming industry were literally in bed with reviewers, a fact that wasn't disclosed to readers. And it tied into a number of other ethical issues. Of course, the conversation quickly devolved to ideologies especially because any criticism of a female ends with misogyny claims. So you had the original criticisms, criticisms impugning the motivation of those criticisms, a misdirection using the broader issue of the role of female characters and players, etc.

The core criticism started when the bf/ex-bf of the gaming dev outed the fact that she had been having an affair with a gaming "journalist". And, in all honesty, the gaming media has always struggled with legitimacy (because there's relatively little professionalism, many or most of the "journalists" have just a gaming background rather than a journalism background, and the industry has always been tight with advertisers (partly because the creators have no journalism background)) and this was a hilariously on-the-nose scandal.
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Zeus posted...

The core issue was that people in the gaming industry were literally in bed with reviewers, a fact that wasn't disclosed to readers.

Lol!!1 Anyone who saw "Newest CoD 12/10 alright! Best purchase in all Europe, bro!" who didn't make that connection is a lost cause.

I don't think there's any real "gate" here. It's all 100% true. Reviewers are paid, and have been for years. It's one of the reasons I missed EGM. They were clearly not paid or John D wouldn't have been working for them.
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1. game journalists fuck up and act pretty fucking unethically
2. a few neckbeards acted were very about the situation and sent death threats and generally acted like stupid fucking children
3. a few particular targets were caught in the act of "false flagging" themselves in an attempt to blow these few incidents way out of proportion and make them seem far more commonplace

in the end, everyone came out of it looking pretty bad
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Its funny how Zeus calls totally unsubstantiated accusations made from a scorned ex facts while insisting other claims with overwhelming evidence made by the justice department are a biased witch hunt

What a level headed poster
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Harassment. Thats as unideological as you can get I think.
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Mead posted...

Its funny how Zeus calls totally unsubstantiated accusations made from a scorned ex facts while insisting other claims with overwhelming evidence made by the justice department are a biased witch hunt

What a level headed poster

lolwut? The fact that she was dating the reviewer is a matter of fact, not unsubstantiated accusation. iirc, the ex also had texts showing the timeline. Finally, none of this was disclosed *prior* to the ex's accusations -- which is a matter of public record. And yet you choose to tie something pretty easy to trace to a vague, impossible-to-prove alleged vast conspiracy is the very height of absurdity.

jramirez23 posted...

Harassment. Thats as unideological as you can get I think.

...which was one result of the controversy, not the controversy itself.
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Mead posted...

Its funny how Zeus calls totally unsubstantiated accusations made from a scorned ex facts while insisting other claims with overwhelming evidence made by the justice department are a biased witch hunt

What a level headed poster

Remember when Zeus jumped the shark a month back, and Icoyar argued his views were going to far?
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Zeus and others are correct. To attempt to prevent the loss of their advertising money, and to keep up the pretense of legitimacy, the GameJournoPros (read about that list) agreed to preach to the uninterested masses that everyone who had a complaint about game journalists abusing trust to gain personal benefits, was a basement-dwelling, permavirgin, white, male, misogynerdzi. Then the #notyourshield campaign rolled out to indicate that a great many people of varying sexualities, ethnicities, and other categories, were tired of being propped up as victims by corporations and publications, and that they, too, had a problem with the way game developers, and games journalism were being run. Nobody likes being talked about like they're a defenseless inferior, especially when they're only being treated like one by those who claim to be their protectors. "Be quiet, brown person, for you have the internalized racisms, and I must protect you, because you are incapable of protecting yourself from words on the Internet."
But when you run the publications and have a worldwide reach, as well as the ability to rally the masses against any who speak dissent, it's easy to convince those who won't snoop around for facts on their own that the side with the money is the side of the truth, so we have people do this day who still believe that GamerGate (stupid name) was and is a hate campaign created to hate on women, people who don't ascribe to the binary division of the sexes, and people who aren't northern Irish or something.
Admittedly, it didn't help that a bunch of e-celebs were claiming to be the parade leaders, like every disgruntled player of video games was a soldier in their private army, and throngs of sock puppets and bad actors publicly admitted to stir up discord on both sides of the argument. I would call it a debate, but when one side is calling people nazis and organizing campaigns to de-platform them, it's hardly a debate.
My sister plays video games, and nobody mistreats her. My own mother got me into video games, and while she doesn't play arcade action games anymore, she still plays casual games on the computer I built for her. My brother practically lives on games, and the only people he mocks are men, because they can take it. Or, at least, don't go crying to daddy Corporation.
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Some of the post here already explained the initial valid concerns. The thing that got me about the whole thing was how quick and coordinated the blow back against gamers was. With multiple articles on multiple websites declaring 'gamers are dead' all in a short span of time.

Legitimacy of video game reviews/journalism has always been pretty bad. Even going back to the gaming magazines of the 90s video game publishers use to threaten magazines with pulling their ads if they didn't review games highly. 3DO was really bad about this apparently according to former EGM staff writers. In the modern sense we have editors playing a game for ten minutes and writing a review. A feel there needs to be a bit of a 'gate' to be a video game reviewer. Something beyond a degree in journalism. EGM in the early to mid 90s use to have a video game aptitude test editors had to pass to write for them. Perhaps video game review websites should bring back this to filter out people?

Anyway, I don't really care for professional reviews anymore. I'll either just read some steam reviews, or watch a couple youtube video reviews to get an idea of a game I'm on the fence with.
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Lokarin posted...

Because I just want the facts.

And the only facts I remember were that "a" game dev sexed "a" game reviewer for better ratings... and that's it.

nope
that was not a fact, it never happened
that was a lie from a jealous ex-boyfriend

I did read someone say that Gamergate started because a female journalist said that people who play games should be called "game players" rather than "gamers" and went on to vent anger at people in GamerGate who were i) harassing and abusing women and ii) demanding game journalists go back to being shills for the industry

I'm not clear what part of that was supposed to be the cause and think it's unlikely that Gamergate could be caused by a response to Gamergate
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Listen and believe, eh? I prefer "trust, but verify". Disagreeing with the media while providing archived links to your evidence is "harassment" these days. Asking people where the money they paid into crowdfunding campaigns went, is "sexism". Identity politics is a cancer. People are directed to become obsessed with being a label, not with being a person. Who cares what you studied, what skills you learned, what hobbies you have, and what talents you've developed? What's in your head and what's in your heart are irrelevant. All that matters is your sex, your skin color, and who you intend to vote for. You have no purpose in being a human; you are a product for the oligarchy to use and abuse as it sees fit. You are a product for Google to sell to advertisers.You are a product for Twitter and Facebook, to increase their stock value.You are an unpaid voter for those who would keep you begging the state for financial aid, because the miserable jobs available to you won't pay enough to afford you a reliable vehicle, a home of your own, land, or higher education that will net you a career.

Listen. Believe. Don't look behind the curtain. Stop asking questions. Stop thinking so much. Kneel. Beg. Roll over. Play dead.

I task everyone to check the history of events, using accounts from both sides, and the middle. Verify the evidence. Screenshots are easily faked. Look for archive links. Just don't look too hard, or be too vocal with your findings, or you may find yourself being denied employment without explanation. You're not asked to be a preacher, but a researcher. Find the truth for yourself, not the truth of those who are paid to write it.
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Here's a summary of Gamergate with all of the ideologies and people removed:

.

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MisterXiado posted...

I task everyone

lol fuck right the fuck off
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such things are hard to explain as
1) in most arguments, each faction has a different narrative resulting in a disagreement as to what the disagreement about
2) Gamergate was not about 1 thing but a mixture

as far as I can tell the three main threads are

1) a jealous es-boyfriend claims a female developer has been having sex with game journalists for good reviews.
investigations confirmed she was in a relaionship with one game journalist but he hadn't written a review of her game suggesting they were having sex each other because they wanted to have sex with each other.
Many Gamegater's did not want to object to 2 adults in a consensual sexual relationship so looked for something else to campaign about.
Some called for Game Journalists to avoid the appearance of corruption by declaring whether they have any personal interest in a game (through crowd-funding, etc). Whether there actually was a problem to be fixed is unclear. It is extremely unlikely that any game journalist ever had sex in return for a good review.

2) for years, maybe decades, game journalism has had some corruption, in that game publishers have been giving the publishers of game journalism exclusive coverage, etc in return for a positive coverage and threatening to withdraw advertising if they received negative coverage.
As a result, game journalists were required by their publishers to inflate scores and be positive and not voice their actual opinions. Some (possibly many) game journalists felt frustrated by this but had to follow their publisher's rules or they wouldn't get published and wouldn't get paid.
Then the game industry decided that the journalists didn't matter so much and stopped pressuring their publishers and instead offered you-tubers early access in return for positive coverage.
This meant that journalists were no longer forced to be shills and started expressing their opinions.
Many gamers hated this - some did not understand that a journalists opinion was just an opinion and became offended by their interpretations of what the journalists.
And so many in Gamergate started demanding journalists stop voicing their opinions and go back to how things were before when they were corrupt.
Much of this apparently manifested in harrassment and abuse of women.

3) game journalists started fighting back declaring that they did not want to write for "gamers" who wanted corrupt journalism and harrassed and abused women but instead wanted to write for "game players" who wanted good journalism and didn't harrass and abuse anyone.
misunderstandings and misrepresentations of this followed leading to many joining in to argue without truly understanding what the argument is about.
this was expanded with misunderstandings over what "freedom of speach" is
some Gamergaters tried to "gag" the female journalist who started the fight back (because of her wish to be a proper journalist) by using advertiser pressure and thus restore corruption to games journalism.
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Are modern politics more important than video games and should they be prioritized over the games themselves?

Some people think so, others disagree.
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Did I just fucking time travel
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TigerTycoon posted...

Are modern politics more important than video games and should they be prioritized over the games themselves?

Some people think so, others disagree.

politics are a part of life
if a game has characters or a story there will be political implications

it's up to players to decide if they want to argue in which direction the politics should be
or if they want to ignore the arguments entirely and iust focus on playing the games
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Here is a video that explains it nicely and easily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STl7-_f4_eA" data-time="
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