#Gamergate - Anita was on Colbert

@PannicAtack: To be fair... that's not a good example, and if anything, all Bioware did was simply add more to the ending to make it make more sense, unless i'm wrong of course, lol

It's the same principle of "complaining to make them change something." The only fundamental difference is whether or not you agree with the change.

Both paties could handle the situation better instead of running to extremes.

I Keep seeing Johntrons name come up in this garbage what did he do to incur the internet wrath?

Not really. Changing the ending in ME3 is fixing a major, fundamental flaw in the the core structure of the story.

Fixing someone's boobyplate armor is just catering to a demographic. It doesn't make the game any better or worse, it only serves to satisfy someone's sensibilities.

In either case, it pretty much is the next step up from censorship. Devs should be as free to make shitty endings as they are scantily clad fem warriors. People demanding they fix stuff instead of moving on to new projects or assets only hurts the games in the long run.

It could be also argued that the boobyplate armor was made to cater to a targeted demographic from the beginning. In either scenario critiques and complaints are acceptable responses if you don't agree with it.

This shit is so stupid and I don't care.

He had the guts to say that maybe something is wrong with gaming journalism. Then the , you know Social justice warriors, high standing for a good cause bullied him to no end on twitter with all kinds of awful insulting tweets , even harassed him in real life at PAX. Just because he had a differing opinion (it wasn't even opposite theirs, a level headed stance, just acknowledged the opposition). This is the future you choose

Well yes, I don't think I would ever argue that m-armor-ies aren't catering, it's just that catering itself isn't really a problem. If you know your audience and want to make games with them in mind, that should be fine. Possibly tasteless, but fine either way.

The real problem is when we make people fix what isn't broken to do it. If the product or asset is finished and out, demanding they fix it because it offends you is demanding they waste time and energy that could be used elsewhere.

What people should be asking for is that they address it in the future, when they create new ideas and games. Let them know you'd like them to start catering to new audiences, and if the demand is high, then they'll probably do it. But what's done should just stay done, or we're never going to make any meaningful progress in either direction.

Well, I made a post that didn't upload for some reason, I don't know.

It's basically this: how can they unilaterally define what a "gamer" is?

Most gamers just play games... some play games and also read a bit about gaming somewhere from time to time.

From these last ones, how many actually dedicates time to discussing games online? And from these ones, how many dedicates time to "hate" online?

This is a vocal minority of a minority...

Agreed.

Post very much reminds me of escape from LA.

I think it's rather funny that it's coming out she never actually filed a police report.

Destructoids resident SJW just got the memo and released his own article in this coordinated effort. This is so transparent that it almost feel alike an elaborate joke.

You know, I was interested and a bit concerned at first, but at this point I just don't care anymore, let these people make up their own silly terms for what a person who plays videogames is, lol

I'll simply go back to playing my games and arguing with my fellow posters here in SW, the best solution to all this mess is to just keep it gaming

Why is it a war on all gamers? It's not Microsoft fans who are the ones that take to Twitter to insult and threaten others over silliness or contaminate gaming forums with senseless hate, nor is it Nintendo or even PC fans that do such despicable things. We all know who's responsible for that kind of behavior so why not put the blame where it rightfully belongs? These people will never change their ways if they're not singled out and held accountable for their irrational behavior and blaming everyone else for their actions won't help anything.

@slim70: Because the only way this topic will be controversial and interesting enough is if the media carpet-bombs the entire gaming community and demonizing it as this group of bigoted angry manchildren society should be scared of, it's sensationalism in it's purest form

Why the **** does anyone care who she slept with? I'm assuming juveniles?

Good article thanks for the link.

Maybe you shouldn't read journalism sites and just be happy. Games aren't going anywhere, spend more time playing them than reading about opinions of them. You can find messages of doom for every single facet of life, even crazy people spell doom for those that use modern technologies. Stop reading that crap if you're too sensitive to cope with opinions.

This video is fantastic... makes me wonder how much game reviews are skewered as well...

First of all zoe quinn and phil fish are messed up in the head. There were rejected by their social circles and thought by getting into gaming they will become more respected but their bad character showed up.

Thats it, but ofcourse clueless organizations like the game developers association see this and acting like they are getting herassed and need assistance. If you just saw what phil fish posted on his twitter, its worse than a youtube 12 year old kid.

As i said on another post

"Gamers" nowadays are budebros playing cod and halo, games nowadays are "interactive experiances" movies. take no skill or any form of dedication and effort or thinking.

Basicly "Gamers" are dead as some article said. Now its just males and females playing games. So ditch the stereotypes already. People who post here and other sites were seeing as nerds...now every dudebro posts and games are designed to appeal to the same crowd as hollywood movies.

Anita Sarkhizean or however her name is had "issues" with her lyingfull pro feministic bs even in college. Those people dont deserve any respect, the problem is that people give them attention thanks to the interent. Dont give em attention, now the media blame gamers and not the individuals who started this nonsene on the internet....yup i am refferring to this 3.

Maybe people dont take the internet seriously, or simply developers started to focus on "dudebros" who dont take what they do seriously nor appreciate it and simply dont care.

Or maybe it has to do with the quinspiracy and the corruption in game journalizm and game development and "gamers" are just angry as to where the industry and personal hobby is heading.

Personally its a coin toss between "gamers" getting pissed about the corrpution and utter lack of clue of the media and the media trashing them as dbags and bullies or the dudebro audience has killed "gamers" by making "gaming" a casual hobby like watching movies.

TBH I feel like this wave of articles is the closest thing you can be to click-bait without actually being click-bait. They typically open with an eye-catching headline about how "gamers" are finished and then go on to define the term "gamer" as a group of people who no one in their right mind would wilfully associate with - controversy averted because they are actually attacking trolls rather than group of people, as the name would suggest, who are passionate about videogames.

Maybe they'll run some riveting stories next on how Islam is finished based on the proliferation of extremism. I'm sure that will go down well.

I believe some of them were in gaming journalism, thus many proposed that it may have created a conflict of interest

Well journalists involved with, friends with, or relatives of, should always excuse themselves from reviews. But then many reviewers go on to create games...and I don't see any outcry if their games are reviewed by former co-workers/friends.

What would constitute a conflict of interests to you in this matter?

I certainly will die some day. As for "gamer", any identity should die as it isn't real.

All of the above that I listed....but I have never seen an outcry about it. Double standard?

Thanks for clarifying, it wasn't clear to me if you were just pointing a double standard or lessening importance on the second part of your post.

So, all those cases are cases of conflict of interest. I agree. And there may be many more probably, some I think I still don't know of. Maybe people weren't as aware as they are now about some of it's forms in the industry (especially about the now obvious for everyone to see indie dev scene cliques). Maybe it is double standard. But if the discussion is widening to questions like dev-journalist friendships and or financial aids, why not let it widen up? Discovering and unveiling the double standard may very well be a way to address other issues that lied ignored for the wrong reasons. I see a reason to point the double standard, as you did, and ask for addressing other important issues as well. I see no reason, though, to point a double standard to ask for equal impunity.

This feminism crap really irritates me.

Games are mainly targeted at men and boys because that's what a) they like to create, and b) where the audience is. As much as feminists would like to say there is an exactly 50/50 split in gaming between males and females it isn't true. It would be like saying there is a 50/50 split on the amount of males and females play with Barbie dolls.

A lot of these so called feminists only speak for themselves, if they don't like something they try to claim all females don't like it when it's not true. Maybe they should go out and actually do some research and ask people what they think and look at what people purchase and why not try to valid their own claims with their own bullshit that they have selectively picked.

I must say, I just miss gaming journalism when it wasn't so fixated on social commentary critiquing. It was still in the gutter then, but at least it was on the right track. Now with all the different write ups and videos being released on the basis of the "gamer" status, as well as the ever growing misogamy and/or feminism, it seems that a ton of people simply lost sight as to why video games were enjoyed in the first place, and why there was some enjoyment when it came to writing about them.

While it's definitely an issue that should be addressed, perhaps it shouldn't be as front and center as it has been for the past little while, because it's just making everyone come off as an asshole.

Oh, look, didn't fucking happen.

Changing something in response to criticism isn't censorship.

I said it's probably not gonna happen, was just spreading the word in case. But you can see how they're organized and rejecting the word gamer and going for something like gamer+.

And yes it's censorship. The artist who worked on Divinity did not change the art because he accepted criticism, he changed it because his boss came personally to him and told him they don't want the negative pressure, change it! And he did, against his vision and wishes.

Yeah, but the titles and what's in the write ups goes against that notion of just "a certain sect". It is full on throwing down the gauntlet on gamers in general, and that is shit regardless. More to the point you are arguing against assholes who use hateful words and want to hold people down and all that jazz and then you wrote this "Suddenly a generation of lonely basement kids had marketers whispering in their ears that they were the most important commercial demographic of all time."

I pick Leigh Alexander, because she's on a higher plane then the other stuff linked in the OP, and she's a substantially better writer to boot. So in that sense I hold her to a higher standard because frankly she's as good as anyone on her best days, regardless if it's something I agree with or disagree, but she generalized a group of people, she was hateful of a group of people, and then can't understand how what she did is no different than the thing she's arguing against.

If it was just a certain group of hateful people, whatever you could let the title slide, but she threw them all under the bus. The people who show their love for Giantbomb in the open, and show up when a Ryan Davis passes away, or tell them how Giantbomb gets them through some shitty times, or show up for the game grumps, or show up for any of that stuff. The same people who show their love for Beyond Good and Evil, a Bayonetta, a Walking Dead, and had her back on the equality stuff. She can pretend that "gamers" aren't her audience, but gamer is a simple term that means you play games. It's not some nuanced meaning, it's just gaming equivalent of a movie-goer. As in people, and she generalized them, so yes it's a load of shit.

I'm with you on the part where a lot of the posters here or on the internet can't handle an actual conversation that requires you know some genuine intelligence, and there are plenty of people in this thread that have said ignorant shit before. That said even when we can get what's caused her frustration, we should be able to call a spade a spade. And in this case Leigh Alexander was being a hateful bitch, so what did she really achieve other than stooping down to the same low as ignorant hateful assholes?

While I think she was trying to make the word gamer carry a more nuanced connotation than simply someone who plays a game, I will concede to your point; the article does go into some extremely abrasive generalizations that reduce the internet gaming scum she was trying to target into a certain representation that isn't befitting.

As I said, it's the next step up. It may not be censorship technically, but it's changing finished content for unobjective complaints to appease a disgruntled fanbase. It might as well be, for all either is worth.

No one can, or should be able to, change a word's meaning on their own, without social acceptance. That's a subversive attempt of forcing others to follow your beliefs. I'm against all kind of subversive means of changing people's opinions. This should happen through open debate, through reason.

Society defines the meanings of words, not people interested in hijacking them for their own purposes. Gamers are not what gaming journalists want them to be. If we truly want to understand gamers, we should study them. Also, the word gamer doesn't mean want they want it to mean. They are, though, applying semiotical measures to adhere to it a pejorative meaning, to push a shaming campaign.

What about a rebuttal on these articles? This time, by the examiner.

Holy crap was anyone on IGN right now?

They make the "Call for Peace" article, we get 1000 comments in ten minutes. People offering other sides of what happened and different oppinions/ First they try to censor comments one at a time but they realise they don't have enough mods for that so they locked the comments section. Gaming media is really trying to censor the entire thing and paint their picture of what's happening.

At first I thought it's only sites like Kotaku and Polygon but now it seems IGN is involved too.

That's the key word though, fanbase... if your fanbase doesn't like your shit then you better change it or you will lose customers. If some random feminist doesn't like your game and tells you to change it or they will get their feminist friends to send you threats then that is censorship.

There is a difference.

3 days straight with twitter blowing up with the #GamerGate thing. Many websites tried to post kind of an apology with 600+ devs signing it up but the comment sections went so crazy that comments started to get deleted to the point that this is the first time in my life I see IGN just closing it down. People are really pissed and the journalist social justice warriors are not backing down either. Instead they are getting even more aggressive, gamasutra in particular.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TadhgKelly/20140831/224548/The_Sorry_State_Of_Gamings_Truthers_And_Their_Gamergate.php

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/02/hundreds-of-developers-are-fed-up-with-the-hate

https://twitter.com/hashtag/gamergate?f=realtime

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http://www.lsureveille.com/opinion/gamergate-a-misogynistic-embarrassment-for-gamers/article_17193578-3246-11e4-ac0a-0017a43b2370.html

http://uproxx.com/gammasquad/2014/09/zoe-quinn-gamergate-is-a-lie-gamers-need-to-stop-telling-themselves/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+uproxx%2Fgammasquad+(Gamma+Squad)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-09-02-editors-blog-a-brief-note-about-gamergate

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/death-to-the-gamer/

Predictably they are spinning it as an attack on Zoe and Anita, and not a barrage of "gamers are dead" articles and just the inability of gaming bloggers to take responsibility for their actions.

Seems like we need an actual journalist to blow this thing wide open.

Of course gamers wouldn't enjoy what these people are preaching. Look at what Gamasutra said in this article (they made a number of bullet points on how to improve gaming by ending "gamers"):

11. We stop upholding “fun” as the universal, ultimate criterion for a game’s relevance. It’s a meaningless ideal at best and a poisonous priority at worst. Fun is a neurological trick. Plenty of categorically unhealthy things are “fun”. Let’s try for something more. Many of the alternatives will have similarly fuzzy definitions, but let’s aspire to qualities like “edifying”, “healing”, “pro-social”, or even “enlightening”. I encourage you to decide upon your own alternatives to “fun” in games (while avoiding terms like “cool” and “awesome” and any other word that simply caters to existing, unexamined biases).

Aren't games supposed to be about fun (thus 'games')? And they are proposing that we "choose" what is fun, but what they are actually proposing is that we don't choose (and let them do that for us by preselecting options), and let them narrow gaming possibilities in general.

I honestly don't care.

These "journalists" are worth to me less than the garbage i took away this morning.

You should care. These journalists are shaping the future perception of gaming, it will be the one of sexists bigots, misogynist, women haters. Because Anita got a suspicous twitter harassment. Yes that's all it took and now gaming needs to change. Expect more policing of gamers and developers around if anita gets a stronger foothold by playing a victim. It will effect you

@SambaLele:

11. We stop upholding “fun” as the universal, ultimate criterion for a game’s relevance. It’s a meaningless ideal at best and a poisonous priority at worst. Fun is a neurological trick. Plenty of categorically unhealthy things are “fun”. Let’s try for something more. Many of the alternatives will have similarly fuzzy definitions, but let’s aspire to qualities like “edifying”, “healing”, “pro-social”, or even “enlightening”. I encourage you to decide upon your own alternatives to “fun” in games (while avoiding terms like “cool” and “awesome” and any other word that simply caters to existing, unexamined biases).

And this is why I have a hard time taking these people serious, and also why I don't think these people can truly make any actual or lasting damage, I mean ffs... This writer actually went out of his way to demonize the idea of fun and e-sports... lmao

Its the principle by god. She's supposed to be this upstanding SJW who fights for womens rights etc yet she got caught slutting it about for positive coverage of her game. She made it even worse by hiding behind her SJW cronies making the usual stereotypes against gamers. Now its blown up its this big ol mess because people from all sides have stuck their noses in.

All this stuff was bubbling just below the surface and this is what it needed to be pushed into the front of everyones mind. Now we have both sides slinging shit at each other hoping some of it sticks.

@ReadingRainbow4 said:

let this be real!