CraigM
3121
Even as someone who agrees with the bulk of Virgils posts (at least the idea if not execution) I agree.
I don’t think they’re insincere necessarily. Narcistic maybe. Intellectually lazy maybe. ;)
I have no problem with people criticizing game companies. I just no longer give credence to those who are quick to accuse counter criticism as sexism. I’ve experienced first hand how quick some people are to assume other people are sexist. I think they’re mostly motivated by wanting to feel good about themselves by showing how much more enlightened they are than the “bad people”.
Like Steve mentioned earlier,the gaming media doesn’t have any real power. It has even less now. When Steve was an eic the game magazines were respected and their words mattered. Now? Not so much. Too much amateur crap getting published. In turn, game sites started hiring activist freelancers who seem more interested in complaining about video game culture than writi about games. And hey, they’re free to do that. But rather than accept criticism they accuse their critics of being sexists, racists, etc. and people have finally gotten fed up with that.
Heh. I have him on ignore but I’m a weak weak man.
Alstein
3124
Alan Scott was confirmed gay with the last reboot. Funny thing was everyone thought it was going to be Guy Gardner for some reason.
I’m always open for some constructive criticism. What am I doing wrong?
And if you’ll allow me to respond in advance, what are you doing right?
Mostly, you read way more into what others have written. It results in a lot of straman arguments.
Brad earlier in this thread I had to explain the point of a child’s fable to you. I’m pretty comfortable with my reading comprehension.
CraigM
3128
Mostly: you go on the attack too quickly, or at least give the appearance of being on the attack. Basically the medium of text, such as it is, makes certain approaches come off poorly. Don’t worry, I roll my eyes plenty when pwk does it from the inverse.
Basically many of your posts, even ones I agree with, come across as on the jerk side of things. It seems that you are intending to attack the person, rather than their message. I don’t know that this is deliberate, but such it is. Most people do that sometimes, to some degree. Your posts just tend to come across like that more.
I’m asking for examples of what people are angry about, and getting crickets. When Desslock brought up the Kingdom Come thing numerous people asked him to elaborate what he felt was out of line, and got crickets. Now Brad is repeating himself over and over and saying that all claims of racism and sexism don’t mean anything to him because he rejects them in advance, which is I guess not unexpected from a guy who likes to cast himself as a proud sayer of vulgar offensive things.
OK. So where do we go from here?
Alstein
3130
And that’s exactly what is meant by the personal attack criticism.
It’s not about banning, its about change, I hear them cry. Changing the future ? Or changing the past?
Ray Bradbury wrote a little on the politically correct (and uncorrect) trying to change the existing, and change the past.
“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
Coda by Ray Bradbury
Well, I tried. Suit yourself.
Oh I see so they are going to effect change through polite requests. Very dangerous. They should not be allowed to speak under any circumstances.
He was condemning the message, not that it was sprinkled in sugar with a pretty please. Besides, that was written long before Tumblr, Twitter and the rise of online identity politics, especially by those engaging in personal attacks and the other methods espoused in the oft-mentioned rules.
This is an example of what you’re doing wrong. You’re like a social justice barbarian, attacking indiscriminately in a frenzied blood rage. You’re in a room with 15 allies and you just keep hitting them because they won’t just stay out of your way.
Aleck
3136
I agree that by and large it’s ignorable. However, that’s not to say it doesn’t happen. There were many, many calls for boycotts of AC:U based on the fact that you couldn’t have a female assassin. There was press coverage of that at the time (June/July). Google: “assassin’s creed unity boycott women” for a few dozen links. I don’t know if there’s any evidence this hurt sales – in the firestorm of shitty reviews, buggy gameplay, and the host of other reasons not to buy AC:U, I suspect the boycott message got lost.
I actually don’t have a problem with calls for a boycott, however. I think that’s using the market to let developers know you don’t like the product they’re selling, and speaking with your wallet (and getting others to do the same). I similarly didn’t have a problem with people annoyed with some of the “journalism” going to advertisers and asking them not to advertise with those companies. Again, those are market forces at work, and if folks want to use market forces, I believe they’re entitled to do so.
We completely agree that harassment campaigns of any sort of going beyond the pale, however. While there were claims of harassment by some of the folks who identified themselves with the pro-GG faction, I don’t know of any evidence on that front. There are at least press accounts of harassment of folks associated with the SJW faction (Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian most prominently, but also Phil Fish, apparently some of the journalists, people called out in the ZQ stuff, etc.) Does anyone know if there has been any police action/follow up regarding those allegations? I’d like to see people who break the law punished, esp. if they’re issuing death threats and the like.
I think we might need to agree to disagree on that front. Here’s the thing:
To the extent that internet forums are mostly just shooting the shit with people of similar interests mixed with outbursts of snark, none of this matters. Completely irrelevant what Brad says about me(as little as my opinion means to him, rest assured, Brad, you have a degree from a directional Michigan and struggle with Aesop’s Fables, you know what I think of you), what I say about Brad, what anyone says about Rockstar or Bayonetta or third wave feminism.
But we are part of internet culture. There is a toxic misogynist element to that culture. Now out and proud MRA types do their part to contribute to that. And people like pwk and Brad who disclaim any association, but obviously are reactionaries, do their part.
But it’s people like Aleck, too. This compulsive denial that a problem exists, this baffling desire to draw an equivalence between the imaginary harassment dealt out by SJWs and the actual documented SELF ADMITTED harassment by #GG… Is he helping?
Yet I’m the one getting lectured. I’m getting lectured for asking “what, exactly, are you mad about?” as if that is an unfair question. I may be in a room with 15 allies, but they all seem to have taken a vow of silence.
steve
3138
Eh, I don’t know about that. Maybe for smaller companies like Stardock was back in the day, but we had just as little measurable impact.
In turn, game sites started hiring activist freelancers who seem more interested in complaining about video game culture than writi about games.
You call them activists who are just complaining, but it seems you’re not considering their body of work that goes beyond the ones they’re most famous/infamous for.
I would’ve killed to have more freelancers who could write about the culture of videogames and offer legitimate, pointed criticism that went beyond the usual graphics/sound/single-player/multiplayer formula. (And we did, plenty of times, it’s just no one really paid attention because they weren’t all hyper-sensitive.)
And hey, they’re free to do that. But rather than accept criticism they accuse their critics of being sexists, racists, etc. and people have finally gotten fed up with that.
Where are these articles that call people sexist, racist, misogynists? I assume these are by known authors on credible sites.
People are conflating all sorts of things here. After articles are written, message boards explode. Reddit explodes. Tumblr explodes. Twitter explodes. None of these responses are articles. In the case of Twitter, they’re 140 character tantrums. In the case of forums, they’re… well, forums. Reddit is Reddit. Tumblr is the home of teenagers and college students who take everything to its most logical extreme of stupid. These are all tantrums of various kinds, and they wield almost no influence outside of their bubble. It’s like the supposed Assassin’s Creed Unity boycott. Was that from a legitimate news outlet, organization, or from a few Tumblr sites? The press, being desperate to cover anything with a hint of scandal, covers all of those things as equally credible. And they’re not.
It would be great to cultivate a gaming culture where random children screaming racial slurs on Xbox Live wasn’t brushed off as “eh it’s online gaming, what are you gonna do?”. It would be great to cultivate a gaming culture where actual criticism, I don’t mean consumer reports “buy/don’t buy” reviewing, but serious thoughtful critiques of art could be written without incurring death threats. (though as we’ve seen from Rick and others, even the buy/don’t buy reviewing is apparently becoming a problem)
I’m open to any and all ideas as to how we get there.
I think the large majority of people who have bothered to post to this thread are anti-GG. But most of those people quickly tire of the shouting matches and total intransigence and stop posting. Honestly I think there are just a handful of posters who are pro-GG… honestly I can see it very tough to be pro-GG because of the basically illusory nature of most of what GG is supposedly fighting against. It’s not surprising to me how quickly GG supporters resort to consipiracy theories, they just don’t have anything solid and factual to go on.
Well they could if they cared to address actual ethics in games journalism, but thus far their targets have been extremely small time or niche websites and the ethics violations they have uncovered have been pretty tenuous at best. The whole idea that personal relationships not being disclosed is THE ethics problem is absurd in the face of the financial relationships that dictate 90% of mainstream gaming press coverage (and which are ignored by GG).
