1610

In no particular order, here’s how the issues are now:

  1. A writer at Kotaku slept with Zoe Quinn and may have given her more positive coverage than she other wise would’ve gotten - Debunked. Kotaku and RPS responded quickly and established that the proposed timeline of malfeasance didn’t work.

  2. Zoe Quinn is a horrible person because she’s a no-talent hack that stirs up controversy to further her career - Ongoing. This is still a favorite accusation from her detractors. Some go so far as to accuse her of faking harassment.

  3. Anita Sarkeesian is a horrible person because she’s a no-talent hack that stirs up controversy to further her career - Ongoing. This is still a favorite accusation from her detractors. Some go so far as to accuse her of faking harassment.

  4. Other writers at Kotaku, Polygon, and other sites violated their readers’ trust by maintaining inappropriate relationships (sexual or otherwise) with game developers and publishers - Ongoing. Kotaku and Polygon just updated their ethics codes and clarified the expectations for their writers. With regards to Patreon, Kickstarter, and other financial arrangements to game makers, both sites have said they are now off-limits to staff that want to then cover the games in question. Detractors maintain that nothing will change because game journalism is inherently corrupt.

1611

Here’s an up-to-date summary from a Real Journalist™:
GamerGate: A Closer Look At The Controversy Sweeping Video Games
I like his conclusion and outlook. If game journalists really have turned too leftist-liberal for their own audience, there’s a large demand the market can fill.

Bring me a chorus of voices, of opinions. I want them all. I want a loud cacophony of differing viewpoints. Agreement is the death of creativity.

1612

(Following Telefrog’s post)
That’s past week news or even 2-weeks old, this week is more about Leigh Alexander’s “Gamers are over” and other similar editorials and articles.

And since yesterday, the follow-up is is this http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/09/gamergate_explodes_gaming_journalists_declare_the_gamers_are_over_but_they.html

To be honest it wasn’t until I read Slate article I noticed there were so many articles with the same tone, it almost seems a conspiracy:

Such articles appeared concurrently in Gamasutra (“ ‘Gamers’ are over” and “A guide to ending ‘gamers’ ”), Destructoid (“There are gamers at the gate, but they may already be dead”), Kotaku (“We might be witnessing the ‘death of an identity’ ”) and Rock, Paper, Shotgun (“Gamers are over”), as well as Ars Technica (“The death of the ‘gamers’ ”), Vice (“Killing the gamer identity”) and BuzzFeed (“Gaming is leaving ‘gamers’ behind”)

1613

Not trying to be nitpicky, but that’s a Forbes “contributor” which is only slightly more controlled than the old 1UP blogs.

1614

Thanks for the update. I personally don’t care about #2 and #3, except to say that people should stop harassing these folks. #4 doesn’t surprise me at all – that’s how all media works, frankly. You develop relationships and nurture those relationships in various ways. I’ve been on both sides of that equation, and that’s why you count on journalists to maintain perspective and professionalism even when they’re covering folks they know personally.

I liked that article – thanks for sharing!

1615

I’m going with this article from Rhodes: https://medium.com/@upstreamism/to-fair-minded-proponents-of-gamergate-7f3ce77301bb

The same goes for the third tier (after enthusiast and investigative reporting) of the gaming press: criticism. As much as, or maybe even more than, reporting, many of you told me that you wanted to ensure that game reviews remain objective. Depending on what you mean by “objective,” that may not be possible, but I think we can all agree that, at the very least, reviews should be relatively unbiased by the author’s relationship to the people or companies whose games they review.

At the same time, many of you told me that you wanted to see less social criticism in those reviews. If you really think that through, you’ll see that you can’t have it both ways. There’s a deep contradiction imbedded in the notion that, on the one hand, writers shouldn’t be beholden to developers when they review a game, and that, on the other hand, they should avoid criticisms they feel are relevant. Most game publishers don’t want to be criticized for the social prejudices they may have worked into their games. As such, the simple fact that a writer or editor would be willing to publish a social criticism ought to be treated as evidence that the venue is maintaining some independence from the industry on which it reports. Even when it doesn’t interest you, even when you disagree with what’s been said— even if, as some of you expressed, you feel personally affronted on the game’s behalf — you ought to welcome such criticism as a check on the sort of cozy developer/press relationship you’ve called corrupt.

1616

Also, the weirdest bit about the #GamerGate Twitter thing is that apparently Adam Baldwin (currently on TNT’s The Last Ship) started it.

1617

Poor Gamersgate. Surely I can’t be the only person who misread the headlines about a ‘gamergate scandal’ as being somehow related to the company?

1618

IMO, this article best sums up what is happening:

http://badassdigest.com/2014/08/31/why-i-feel-bad-for-and-understand-the-angry-gamergate-gamers/

1619

Has anyone yet floated the theory that this is all a secretly orchestrated campaign to get people to pay attention to gaming journalists?

1620

I have this, at least
https://twitter.com/plante/status/507555714257408000

1621

Point 4 is also as old as the world.

A long time ago I was writing mainly news for an Italian MMORPG site, and I had to leave because they asked me to write more “positive” news. Otherwise the game companies complained and wouldn’t give the usual “gifts” like beta codes and whatnot.

But then, the main reason I joined in the first place WAS because I could get stuff that otherwise would be precluded (in that case, the WoW beta, many months before release).

1622

I have to say that the way overheated rhetoric around “corruption” and journalists having “agendas” is getting tiresome really quickly. It seems like such a warped perspective of how people actually experience professional careers. At the very most what we’re dealing with are some gray issues surrounding fairly mundane ethical concerns. Most professions have ethical codes of conducts - attorneys, doctors, teachers, bankers, soldiers, researchers, elected officials, driving instructors, professional athletes, etc. Journalists have them as well. Absolutely none of these professions are lily-white. Yet only in the most egregious cases would any of this rhetoric be sort of warranted. Yet as far as I know I haven’t seen a shred of evidence that any game journalist has 1. committed plagarism, or 2. misrepresented facts or viewpoints out of some undisclosed fiduciary interest which as far as I know are the big two ethical no-no’s in journalism.

1623

Skimmed it. The money quote is that ultimately he doesn’t know what’s going on either:

This is the only place where I find myself unable to understand these kids - if you feel so put-upon, why are you putting upon others?

I think a lot of us can nod along to what he’s writing there. The difference is we didn’t go on Twitter and YouTube to attack people. Our frustration was localized even in an era of BBSs, IRC, email, AOL Instant Messenger, and early vBulletin forums. It’s going to take a while to absorb how modern social media changes that.

1624

Another proof of a seemingly balanced view that devolves in rhetorical drama and exacerbates the problems: http://elizabethsampat.com/the-truth-about-zoe-quinn/

This is war, and the truth is there’s no balanced reporting. There’s no “hearing both sides.” If you’re not speaking out with us or fighting for us, then you’re not some reasoned logician who is letting cooler heads prevail— the truth is you don’t give a shit about the women in the industry. You don’t care about the casualties. And you are part of the problem.

The casualties.

“I tweeted earlier today, We should have a war memorial for all of the women we have lost to this. We should lay flowers and grieve and see our reflections in stone.”

“A lot of the women in our industry exist in a constant state of fear.”

“The truth is sometimes I have survivor’s guilt, and sometimes I have panic attacks about being the only one left fighting”

I mean, I can sympathize on a lot there, but it really blows it to epic proportions that are frankly absurd (and she seems to live fully within Hollywood mythology).

1625

I think the reason this continues is the thrill of the hunt. Even I’m a little tickled by these ridiculous GIFs linking a conspiracy together. If you’re really into it, you might lose sight of how silly and irrelevant it is.

1626

What I don’t understand, is all the outrage with some game journalism, even if they don’t like them. Why? Because there is “free market” of it, for every hipster SJW journo, there has to be 2 or 3 more “traditional” game reviewer. Just read those if they are what you like. If so many people agree with you they will win the audience and the ones that are disliked will perish, or people will watch Youtube channels, or Twitch streamers etc, or just read in the forums, there are a lot of options for everybody.

1627

I just listened to this to see what the “leaders” of the #gamergate movement are thinking:

It appears they feel that the game press is shoving a liberal agenda down the public’s throats, just like the movie press did with Brokeback Mountain.

They are gleefully declaring that there is a huge hole where the liberal press has abandoned real gamers, and that there needs to be a whole new press created to fill the hole.

They cite Brietbart as a fantastic example to follow.

Wow.

1628

This article from Owen Grieve summed it up for me as far as explaining what was going on to my wife.

Fun game: Try explaining the events of the last two weeks to a friend who already thinks games are for socially stunted children.

My wife plays a lot of video games, but she’s not what most “gamers” would consider in their demographic. She played Bioshock Infinite, for example, for the story and art which she recognized as being from the same company as BioShock, which she loved - for the story and art. She adores the Lego games. Explaining the #GamerGate thing to her was difficult because she already has a pretty low opinion of the typical hardcore “gamer” that got riled up by the supposed ethics breaches.

1629

It’s not that weird when you read the rest of his twitter.