Ok I feel a bit foolish asking this, but my twitter feed is exploded with #gamersgate tag. I’ve picked up a few factoids, but am basically clueless on what is going on beside the sex part. Is there a QT3 a decent source on non hysterical info?
The wikipedia entry has a lot of background and links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy
I certainly hope none of these people ever get wind of sports journalism.
Man, you are going top regret this.
I just learned that a Gamergate is a “reproductively viable female worker ant”.
A gamergate is a reproductively viable female worker ant that is able to reproduce with mature males when the colony is lacking a queen. Most commonly occurring within the primitive species of the poneromorph subfamilies, gamergate females differ from their fellow workers by a combination of elevated fecundity and aggression-related mutilation of competitors’ secondary sexual characteristics. Subsequent to their first mating event, however, aggression is no longer needed as females secrete chemical signals that lead the workers to accept their role as reproducers for the colony.
The more you know.
-Todd
Check the games journalism thread. Not that it’s not hysterical, mind you, but it’s definitely been talked about a LOT…
Note that it’s GamerGate, no “s”. GamersGate is a nice online game store.
Yeah, the Games Journalism thread has all the nonsense on this you could possible ever want.
Ah I missed the s, I subconsciously add it which really added to my confusion. Now it makes more sense cause I couldn’t figure WTF the gamestore had to do with it.
That’s a biased page and all edits are controlled by “wikiproject feminism” so I suggest the OP browses #notyourshield and #gamergate and comes to their own opinion.
That’s misrepresenting what interest groups do on wikipedia, and what bias really is. Let’s see what’s wrong with your bias claim:
1- Wikiproject Feminism is not the only interest group for that article. There’s also Wikiprojects Videogames, Wikiprojects Internet Culture and Wikiprojects Journalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gamergate_controversy. All of them have the same category. Wikiprojects do not control the edits, although it’s obvious there will be more policing of incorrect edits by people interested in those groups.
2- Claiming bias because one article that discusses feminism is part of a feminism wikiproject is absurd (because feminism, and attacks against it, are part of this, like journalism, videogames and internet culture are, but you wisely omit those groups from your bias claim). Wikiproject Feminism includes everything related to feminism, including criticism against it.
3- The page is under arbitration from wikipedia due to apparently, many edits failing to provide quotations. This, having following the “scandal” should be no surprise to anyone. This is not related to any of the Wikiprojects listed above (those are tools for categorizing and channeling editors into subject matters they might have expertise on) and there are very clear guidelines why edits are edited out. Most of the time because they fail to present “relevant” sources. Wikipedia is thankfully quite resilient to manipulation, specially on popular themes that are more tightly policed (manipulation does creep in in low traffic topics until it’s noticed).
4- Are you suggesting twitter arguments are a more unbiased tool to gather information than wikipedia? That’s mental, but even then you provided links to hashtags that are representative of only one side of this, thus introducing an even greater bias.
If the article is “biased” towards one side it is because editors have been able to produce more relevant references supporting that side. This is the same fallacy as claiming Wikipedia is “liberal” in religious or social issues. Wikipedia has problems and needs to be used carefully (specially, one needs to go to the sources when doing any serious work) and attacks against it because of it fallibility are reasonable, but attacks against any perceived “bias” is simply a way to ignore the facts without providing alternatives.
I think bias arguments make some sense when the articles used as references are a large part of the story themselves.
Whether there’s a bias or not that Wikipedia entry is hideously written.
“Cultural changes within the gaming industry, gaming community, and gaming journalism are seen as having formed the situation in which the controversy has arisen.”
That’s the start of the second paragraph, god knows how bad it gets further in. I personally think this summary by Erik Kain is pretty good. Actually, in this situation, ignorance may be the saner option.
I’ll just post this collection of articles put together by a fantastic writer and friend of mine. His opinions on the matter are complicated and he didn’t want to handle this particular hot potato in public so instead he gathered up various articles he’d read to make a pretty handy and comprehensive one-stop on the subject. I’ve no doubt some of these articles will also link to plenty of others too.
Hope this helps!
This I agree with.
That was a good read, thanks!
Should I click on the “epic blog post”, I wonder if I can count on one hand the number of times Brad portrays himself as a victim.
I think I spare myself the trauma of numerous facepalms.
I just read it. And you are unfortunately right on the money.
Sigh. Here goes my attempt at a rundown:
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Zoe Quinn (developer of Depression Quest) allegedly cheated on her boyfriend. He subsequently publishes a Tumblr with private conversations between him and Zoe. Among the guys she’s accused of sleeping with is a writer for Kotaku.
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Zoe Quinn is already a controversial figure due to previous dust-ups with people that objected to her game. The MRA (Mens’ Rights Activists) on 4chan and Reddit especially dislike her due to her outspoken (and they believe inflammatory) feminism. Along with this, some regular gamers seem to hate her just because she made, what is in their opinion, a bad game and gets more news coverage than warranted. As you might imagine, the suggestion that she cheated on her boyfriend with five other men is deliciously awesome to them. They point to her infidelity as evidence of her hypocrisy. Some people begin to put together the idea that Zoe slept with game journalists in exchange for coverage because “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”.
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Videos and threads about Zoe get made. This kicks off the “Five Guys” meme that the ex-boyfriend started, likening her infidelity to the burger chain’s food as in “Even Five Guys can’t satisfy Zoe Quinn.” Admins start shutting down threads on Reddit, Neogaf, and news sites because in their view, it’s not newsworthy, some naked pictures of Zoe start showing up, (she did some nude modeling in the past) and the posters are sometimes threatening her well-being. This starts what is known as the “Quinnspiracy”. In the accusers’ view this is all part of the effort to shut down discussion, promote a feminist agenda, and silence critics of game journalism. They accuse opponents of being SJW (social justice warriors) that zealously push feminism in all places.
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Rock Paper Shotgun and Kotaku publish breakdowns that show that the writer accused of sleeping with Zoe Quinn could not possibly have done so in exchange for posting favorable articles. The writer wrote one article about Depression Quest while at RPS - at the same time every other news site did - and one article about Zoe taking part in a reality series for indie game devs. Both articles were written long before the alleged sexual encounter and the writer didn’t write anything about her or her game afterwards. Detractors maintained that this still indicates that game journalists and indie devs are too close.
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With unfortunate timing, Feminst Frequency speaker Anita Sarkeesian publishes her latest Tropes in Video Games video. MRA hates her a lot, so this inflames them further. A lot of regular gamers don’t like her either because they perceive her videos as attacks.
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Anita and Zoe receive death threats. Doubters say they either faked them or revel in the infamy because they’re attention seekers. Others point to this as more evidence that MRA and gamers hate feminism to an irrational degree.
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This now morphs into #gamergate. Adam Baldwin, formerly of Serenity and currently starring in The Lost Ship, is famously right-wing, active on social media, and has a popular podcast. He points to this whole thing as evidence that game journalists push feminism and a SJW outlook.
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#gamergate catches on. Unfortunately, because it’s a Twitter thing, the meaning and origin gets garbled and everyone uses it sometimes for cross-purposes. People start using this as a catch-all for how they feel game journalism has a lot of ethical issues. At the same time, MRA use it to combat feminism. Gamers use it to protest articles that proclaim “gamers are dead” because the audience is no longer exclusively boys.
To add to Telefrog’s post:
- Zoe Quinn sneaks into a 4chan IRC channel and records logs indicating that a good bit of the #gamergate and #notyourshield movements were actually ginned up by 4chan to destroy Zoe Quinn (And Anita Sarkeesian), and not to uncover any ethical problems in journalism or push back from minorities supporting gamers against “social justice warriors”.
Here’s a link to the logs if anyone wants to see what’s really behind the supposedly enlightened movement. http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/08/zoe-quinns-screenshots-of-4chans-dirty-tricks-were-just-the-appetizer-heres-the-first-course-of-the-dinner-directly-from-the-irc-log/
One of the best things about Qt3 was that there was no #gamergate thread. I guess all things must pass…