Games Journalism 2014: The Wherever-the-hell-this-has-gone

[Juan_Raigada]

Ah yes, of course, racism is just like having scantily-clad females in videogames! I’ve got it now!

Racism is like sexism (if you fail to see this, I dunno what to say anymore). What you refer to can be (or not, depends on context) sexist. As the representation (or lack of thereof) of a poc can be (or not) racist depending on context.

You are confusing a symptom for the illness.

[RickH]

Why are you immediately suggesting someone is racist? Just stop. Stick with what’s actually said and done instead of trying to diminish statements by just calling people racist, misogynist, corrupt, criminal. I don’t call you an anti-Semitic pedophile, even though you might be one. I stick with what’s actually said.

And that’s my major gripe with the SJW-types. It’s not enough to disagree, one must deny the legitimacy of anyone who disagrees with the party line of the moment. I am a good guy, therefore anyone who disagrees with me, or even fails to agree with me enough, is a bad guy. Because that is the eternal motto of the SJW: not good enough.

And how does the SJW know all of this? Activism grants a special clarivoyance, the ability to see the “true” motives of anyone else (I personally blame the ‘deconstruction’ pushers in the Academy). And denial of such motives is confirmation of such motives. Heads I win, tails you lose. Such are the benefits of ideological purity, the special privilege to live above the muddled, compromised world of their inferiors.

Which is why I tend to turn a jaded eye toward the perpetually dissatisfied. It will never be enough to get 50%, 80%, or even 95% of what they want. 100% or nothing, damn the expense, damn the waste of time, and damn the sacrifice of people who won’t follow the party line close enough. Disagreement is secular sin, and we are the secular inquisition.

[Aleck]

And that’s my major gripe with the SJW-types. It’s not enough to disagree, one must deny the legitimacy of anyone who disagrees with the party line of the moment. I am a good guy, therefore anyone who disagrees with me, or even fails to agree with me enough, is a bad guy. Because that is the eternal motto of the SJW: not good enough.

And how does the SJW know all of this? Activism grants a special clarivoyance, the ability to see the “true” motives of anyone else (I personally blame the ‘deconstruction’ pushers in the Academy). And denial of such motives is confirmation of such motives. Heads I win, tails you lose. Such are the benefits of ideological purity, the special privilege to live above the muddled, compromised world of their inferiors.

Which is why I tend to turn a jaded eye toward the perpetually dissatisfied. It will never be enough to get 50%, 80%, or even 95% of what they want. 100% or nothing, damn the expense, damn the waste of time, and damn the sacrifice of people who won’t follow the party line close enough. Disagreement is secular sin, and we are the secular inquisition.

Rick, that’s not fair to ascribe that only to your “SJWs.” That’s true to idealistic zealots of all stripes – typically a “live and let live” or an open willingness to hear a dissenting viewpoint is one of the first things lost when you buy into a cause. That’s true of everything from religious radicals to PS4 or Xbox fanboys. On the conservative side, I have yet to meet a politically active evangelical Christian whose viewpoint wasn’t completely full of contradictions, but I’ve never managed to convince them of that – nor will I. The same is true for just about any deeply held belief; it’s human nature to cling to the things you believe and, to some extent, to try to force those beliefs on others.

I agree that a lot of what is posted as SJW nonsense is indeed intolerant and disrespectful of opposing views, but I don’t think you can say that is representative of everyone who wants to make gaming more inclusive any more than you can say that the people posting death threats are representative of everyone who thinks this whole thing is fairly ridiculous (or that the fanboys of various consoles are representative of everyone who owns that console, to extend the earlier comparison). What we’re hearing in this debate is, just as it is in our political system, the loudest, most extreme viewpoints. It’s not fair to paint everyone on one side of the argument (or the other) with the same brush. You may disagree with the SJWs, but that doesn’t make you a racist, misogynistic, death-threatening troll living in your parent’s basement. By the same token, not everyone on the other side of this argument holds the views you ascribe to them in your post.

[flyinj]

If anything, it is fascinating to read the old guard’s reasoning as to why the evolution of the media is wrong.

There are very strong parallels between sexism and racism. For example, look at the environment from the 1950s and 60s where men would make extremely offensive sexual comments to their female colleagues at work. Today it’s looked upon as extremely offensive, as it rightly should be. I’m sure at the time there were men who were in the office but didn’t themselves partake in the behavior, but were very “annoyed” when women complained about it.

It would be really interesting to have had the internet around when feminist critique of movies started appearing. I wonder if the same amount of vitriol would be thrown around.

As a happy fact for the old guard, movies became less cliche and offensive in the wake of this critique, but movies are still just as good!

[Juan_Raigada]

And that’s my major gripe with the SJW-types. It’s not enough to disagree, one must deny the legitimacy of anyone who disagrees with the party line of the moment. I am a good guy, therefore anyone who disagrees with me, or even fails to agree with me enough, is a bad guy. Because that is the eternal motto of the SJW: not good enough.

I fail to see this. Most of the arguments I’ve read are either criticizing games (and not saying anything substantive about who plays them and who makes them), criticizing the harassers, or criticizing the people who defend the harassers. Now, I might have not read enough (I mostly read this forum and things linked from here)…

Also, deconstructivism is actually about analyzing texts and their meanings despite what the authors intended, meant or thought. It actually is completely neutral on judging authorship intentions (although it does critique the cultural context the author writes from, but not thee author him/herself). It’s somewhat silly when taken to the extreme, granted, but it’s definitely not about stating anybody’s true motive (but for, maybe, the person doing the deconstruction itself).

[kedaha]

I fail to see this. Most of the arguments I’ve read are either criticizing games (and not saying anything substantive about who plays them and who makes them), criticizing the harassers, or criticizing the people who defend the harassers. Now, I might have not read enough (I mostly read this forum and things linked from here)…

Also, deconstructivism is actually about analyzing texts and their meanings despite what the authors intended, meant or thought. It actually is completely neutral on judging authorship intentions (although it does critique the cultural context the author writes from, but not thee author him/herself). It’s somewhat silly when taken to the extreme, granted, but it’s definitely not about stating anybody’s true motive (but for, maybe, the person doing the deconstruction itself).

Selection bias.

[Trelane]

What we’re hearing in this debate is, just as it is in our political system, the loudest, most extreme viewpoints.

While that’s true, we shouldn’t suggest that the two extremes are morally equivalent. Only one side has fanatics making violent threats towards individuals. The goals of the progressives don’t seem particularly controversial either: defend women against internet harassment, stop the harassers, improve the way women are represented in games, throw out some of the dull & cliched tropes that developers employ out of lazyness.

It’s unfortunate they took the approach of “Either join our crusade or you’re an enemy/misogynist/useful idiot”, as it caused a lot of unnecessary friendly fire.

[deccan]

The point (if you reread the extract you quoted in your reply) isn’t that reviewers shouldn’t write about tropes (or anything else) they dislike, it’s that readers shouldn’t be labeled racist/misogynist/homophobic when they express their own preference for game reviews that shelf politics, etc.

You are correct in this respect and I retract what I said. As Tim James noted, it is indeed reaching. The content of a game may well be reasonably judged as racist / misogynist / homophobic etc. but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the creators and consumers who enjoy that content deserve these labels. I think it is worth noting here that, as a easy example of what the gamers community (I hate that they’ve appropriated the word, but there’s nothing that I can do about it) rail against the most, in Ms. Sarkeesian’s FemFreq videos, the criticism is always targeted at the games’ content. So far as I know, the criticism has never been directed against creators or consumers in any of her videos.

The reviewer is certainly entitled to express those opinions on whether a game has misogynist content, etc., and readers should be equally entitled to either disagree with them or (more importantly, as the column argues) express their preference for excluding that analysis in reviews – just like they’re free to express their preference for less analysis of “screen resolution” or a desire for more consideration of the multiplayer features. That doesn’t make them “racist” or “sexist” any more than it makes them Luddites and cavemen for wanting less discussion of whether a game supports 4k resolution well.

This is where I think you are wrong. Yes, readers should indeed be entitled to disagree with how reviews are written, including whether or not there should be discussion of offensive content, and are entitled to express that disagreement. But how that disagreement is expressed is crucial. If a reviewer covering a game remarks that it should have included, say a homosexual romance option, and the gamers community responds with a slew of homophobic slurs and insults directed personally against the reviewer, I do think it would be fair to call them homophobic. Likewise, a gamer who actually does only enjoy playing strong male protagonists and does only enjoy seeing women in subservient roles and as sex objects, an activity that takes place in a private space and isn’t directed against any real persons, may not necessarily be misogynistic. But if he responds to suggestions that games attempt to be more inclusive towards women by calling the women making the suggestions words like “cunt” and “bitch”, an action that takes place in the public sphere and against a real person, I think it would be fair to call them misogynists.

I think I covered that above, but to reiterate and supplement what I said; because it’s not a topic that interests them at all, and it’s annoying to be lectured and told what’s good for you when you solely view games as escapism. Especially when you may think the analysis is smug, puerile, misguided, and often insufferably stupid. That’s just not a jolly good time for many people.

I know it’s difficult to believe, given your apparent passion for the topic, but trying to redress perceived social wrongs by advocating the covering up pixelated female breasts is uninteresting, fruitless and stupid to many people.

Your comments here suggest to me that you misunderstand the objective and motivation of these critiques. You seem to believe that the idea is to tell what is good for them and to right social wrongs. As usual with such things, I cannot claim to speak for anyone but myself so take whatever I say here with a grain of salt. So far as I understand it, the call for inclusion is first and foremost made for the benefit of the people making the call. To build on your example of the 4k resolution comment, I have partial red-green color blindness. It makes a big difference to me if a game has special UI options to help with this or has even designed the UI with this in mind. As such I have special appreciation for developers who include such options and reviewers who make special note of the presence of such options.

If I publicly make this stance known, it is conceivable that people who do not have red-green color blindness may take exception. Why are devs spending precious development time on a useless feature? These design choices even make the UI uglier! Why is this reviewer talking about stupid shit that I don’t care about? These people are certainly entitled to their opinions. But I will still think they are jackasses.

Similarly a female gamer who generally likes an RPG may feel disappointed that the romance options for a female player character are much more limited than the options for a male player character. A female game reviewer, thinking of the female players who might play this game, may include this point in a review. Do they have the interests of a heterosexual male gamer foremost in mind when they do this? No, they simply think that it would be a good extra feature for female gamers like themselves. Sometimes, things really are that simple. How should they think and act if a male-dominated gamers community respond by insulting them and saying that this game isn’t for women, it’s for men and tell them to go away?

I am a middle-aged, heterosexual male of Chinese ethnicity. I support the call for more inclusivity. Do I support it for the good of the white male gamers, who are already the included? No, I support it for the good of the excluded because I think it is the decent thing to do and because I think games should be for everyone. But I also support it for the good of myself. I think more inclusive games are games that challenge existing tropes, that are more innovative and that are more interesting. By being more aware of the tropes and by making a conscious effort to move beyond them, the games become better and I benefit because I would like to play better games.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t like the things that most males like. I watch porn. I downloaded sex mods for Skyrim. If a videogame has sliders for blood and gore, I turn them all the way up. I still support the call for inclusivity and applaud Ms. Sarkeesian’s videos. This is because I recognize that the videogaming industry is so male dominated that there is absolutely no danger that the male centric tropes will ever go away. I enjoy the male centric tropes too but I don’t want there to be only the male centric tropes because the same shit gets boring after a while. I enjoyed the first couple of times I saw a strip bar level in a game. But Ms. Sarkeesian notes, it seems like right now every “gritty” game feels the need to have a strip bar level. That is just lazy and derivative. Variety is good. Diversity is good.

Those threats and all criminal behavior are reprehensible.

I see that you edited this comment. I would have called you out for this in its original form.

Conservative women are constantly subjected to similar threats and bigotry in social media, just for expressing their views.

And that of course is wrong too. But it is also wrong to say that all women online are subjected to similar threats and bigotry and that is just how things are. That is unacceptable and should always be condemned.

[gurugeorge]

Racism is like sexism (if you fail to see this, I dunno what to say anymore). What you refer to can be (or not, depends on context) sexist. As the representation (or lack of thereof) of a poc can be (or not) racist depending on context.

You are confusing a symptom for the illness.

Ah, the medical metaphor, so handy in such circumstances ;) I’d say rather that racism is more comparable to misogyny than sexism, although at one time sexism and misogyny were more closely allied.

Here’s a thought experiment: womens’ romantic novels portray men in a certain stereotyped (and, being a man, I have to say somewhat ludicrous) way. Are they sexist? Should we have less of them, ban them? Are the novelists comparable to racists?

As I see it, stuff matters when the rubber hits the road of how we treat people as individuals. So far as a movement towards “social justice” aims at that, no problem. But when it goes beyond that, to check how people think, speak and write, it becomes the enemy.

It’s no longer actually liberal, but has become a religion-substitute that lends itself to conformity and browbeating others.

[Juan_Raigada]

Ah, the medical metaphor, so handy in such circumstances ;) I’d say rather that racism is more comparable to misogyny than sexism, although at one time sexism and misogyny were more closely allied.

i concede it depends on the definition. For me racism and sexism are more about social behaviors and structures more than actual violence (lower salary, harder access to jobs… Etc), and xenophobia and misogyny are more about the person to person interaction. But definitions can and do vary, so fair enough.

Here’s a thought experiment: womens’ romantic novels portray men in a certain stereotyped (and, being a man, I have to say somewhat ludicrous) way. Are they sexist? Should we have less of them, ban them? Are the novelists comparable to racists?

As I see it, stuff matters when the rubber hits the road of how we treat people as individuals. So far as a movement towards “social justice” aims at that, no problem. But when it goes beyond that, to check how people think, speak and write, it becomes the enemy.

i do think some of those novels are sexist, and very comparable to mid twentieth century representation of people of color in media (stereotyped and relegated to secondary roles, but not necessarily hateful). I do not, however, call for the banning of anything, but for discussion and awareness. I don’t really think anybody is doing.

If anything, hiding a discourse can be counterproductive, because then you can’t really talk against it. Criticism does not imply censorship. This is the logic step I seem to be missing in this conversation. This and the whole “the enemy” talk going on, since none of the original criticism that sparked this had anything to say about anybody, but about something (again, that was after the harassment).

[Juan_Raigada]

Ok, so this is interesting.

FBI working with game developer association to combat online harassment

The headline is clickbait (it doesn’t seem the FBI is doing anything else than provide computer security guidelines) but the interesting part is that the IGDA is taking the matter of harassment as policy now (which makes me sad about its extent…)

[gurugeorge]

i do think some of those novels are sexist, and very comparable to mid twentieth century representation of people of color in media (stereotyped and relegated to secondary roles, but not necessarily hateful). I do not, however, call for the banning of anything, but for discussion and awareness. I don’t really think anybody is doing.

Kudos to you for being consistent. I take the view, on the other hand, that neither the casual stereotyping in womens’ romantic novels re. men, nor the casual stereotyping in games re. women, matter much at all.

They’re not even worth criticizing, far less browbeating others with. They’re symptoms of what Victorians used to call our “baser instincts”. So we have them, so what?

So women unconsciously see men as providers they can cuckold while fucking the bad boy; men unconsciously see women as tits on a stick. So what? It actually doesn’t matter a toss, so long as we treat each other with respect in fact, in daily life. Civilization is partly taming our animal selves so that we behave well, irrespective of what’s going on in our heads - and that cuts across everything.

The only counter-argument I can see might be the “desensitization” one, but while that line of argument might have some relevance when you’re talking about something like porn, in relation to videogames its as fallacious as the argument re. violence in videogames.

The proper response to inadequate female armor and the like in videogames is to mock it as silly (e.g. just as silly as the way men are portrayed in womens’ romantic novels). But it’s not right to freight it with any more importance than that - certainly not to the extent of likening people who enoy it or defend it to racists. That just heats up the tone of the conversation to no great purpose (other than perhaps making oneself feel good by self-identifying oneself as “the right kind of person” to unknown others out there - which in a way is quite disgusting because its using serious matters like past atrocities to shore up one’s own ego, and cheapening the meanings of words to boot).

[playingwithknives]

Sarkeesian is able to compile those videos because she plays an enormous amount of games. People leveling these criticisms aren’t outsiders looking in, they’re game players who want to talk about a medium they love. I’m sorry it’s about topics you don’t care about? I don’t know what else to say then that.

Someone dug up the video where she said she didn’t play any games and had to learn about them to do the videos.

http://youtu.be/gcPIu3sDkEw?t=52s

[HRose]

May be me but the proofs Zoe Quinn is showing about the “conspiracy” actually prove the exact contrary: https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=email&utm_medium=email

The thing is almost completely unreadable due to very specialized lingo and absolutely zero clear agenda:

“TFYC support”

“the PR angle”

“mansplaining”

“SJW ranks”

“IGF Comittee Whistleblower”

“blackhats”

“cut and dry on speculation”

“MRA”

“sockpuppets”

Read that page, it’s not the proof this has been serious harassment. It’s the proof it’s all a fucking GIANT ROLEPLAYING GAME (probably written by Neal Stephenson) and everyone is having a laugh. Probably Zoe as well, at this point.

The peak for me is the big post repeating:

ABORT THE RAID IRC’S

ZOE IS IN THEM

It’s like watching the poorest Z-movie. It’s all an act.

[playingwithknives]

Read that page, it’s not the proof this has been serious harassment. It’s the proof it’s all a fucking GIANT ROLEPLAYING GAME (probably written by Neal Stephenson) and everyone is having a laugh. Probably Zoe as well, at this point.

The peak for me is the big post repeating:

ABORT THE RAID IRC’S

ZOE IS IN THEM

It’s like watching the poorest Z-movie. It’s all an act.

With her $2630+ monthly income from Patreon, it’s an act well worth keeping up.

[HRose]

I’m not sure she’s such a mastermind, but surely she’s surfing the “harassment” more than being swallowed by it.

[HRose]

Also, it’s basically the modern version of “WarGames”, the 1983 movie.

[Nesrie]

Congrats, buddy. Candidate for the most meaningless retort in QtT history.

You have said nothing of substance, whatsoever, and when repeatedly called upon that conduct you just continuously bleat that you have, like an impotent mantra you’ve adopted and now cherish.

Yeah, you see your word choice here tells me you can’t be bothered to actually read what others have written. I am not doing that homework for you. Good luck with your crusade.

[RickH]

I agree that a lot of what is posted as SJW nonsense is indeed intolerant and disrespectful of opposing views, but I don’t think you can say that is representative of everyone who wants to make gaming more inclusive any more than you can say that the people posting death threats are representative of everyone who thinks this whole thing is fairly ridiculous (or that the fanboys of various consoles are representative of everyone who owns that console, to extend the earlier comparison). What we’re hearing in this debate is, just as it is in our political system, the loudest, most extreme viewpoints. It’s not fair to paint everyone on one side of the argument (or the other) with the same brush. You may disagree with the SJWs, but that doesn’t make you a racist, misogynistic, death-threatening troll living in your parent’s basement.

Agreed. I personally have no problem with games “being more inclusive,” or polite requests for future accommodations.

By the same token, not everyone on the other side of this argument holds the views you ascribe to them in your post.

Of course, the worst examples always stand out the most.

[Juan_Raigada]

The proper response to inadequate female armor and the like in videogames is to mock it as silly (e.g. just as silly as the way men are portrayed in womens’ romantic novels). But it’s not right to freight it with any more importance than that - certainly not to the extent of likening people who enoy it or defend it to racists.

I agree. I never likened anybody to a racist. I likened sexism to racism (and the representations thereof), which is different. The people doing the you criticize thus you are calling me something logical leap are mostly offended people who don’t realize cultural criticism is normally very neutral towards both the creators and the consumers.

It just surprises me that people get that offended about critics…