A Challenge to Pro-#GamerGaters and Anti-#Gamergaters

Kevlar Eater

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Pro-GamerGate. Been a gamer for as long as I could remember, which was like, 20 years ago (I'm 25 at the time of this post). Outside of gaming, pool care, fitness and gardening have become my hobbies. I love the look of crystal clear pool water, I like seeing the fruits of my gardening labor (literally, I'm growing cantaloupe) grow, and I hope to one day have the musculature to turn womens' heads fast enough to cause whiplash. Also, an ex-brony that, to some extent, believes in love and tolerance, or in Rarity's case, generosity.

I was as close to the epicenter of GamerGate (jokingly called Drama Quinnspiracy) as one could possibly be. I spent days without sleep or game-playing keeping tabs on what's going, who was censoring stuff and why. I quickly assumed that all of these sites are in cahoots with each other if there was such mass censorship. I didn't say anything here or anywhere else because at the time, my assumptions were exactly that -- assumptions. Plus, I didn't want mountains of flaming shit thrown my way, so I chose to stay on the sidelines and kept an eye out for anything interesting. I support GamerGate because I will not allow anyone to deny me my humanity because they don't like my skin color, or the fact that I'm male, straight and enjoy videogames. I enjoy being the very bane of the existence of those that want me executed for the hobby I enjoy and grew up with. I stay in GamerGate because I know those that hope to see this industry die are the very monsters they say they oppose. I no longer see humans; just caricatures, bigots, misandrists, criminals and ironically enough, misogynists. But ultimately, I support GamerGate because I have grown sick of people like Kuchera, Faraci and Alexander, sick of the endless click, nerd or gamer bait being slung at every opportunity, sick of the collusion between the villains with good publicity, sick of the professional victims earning coin for simply being female, and sick of the harassment thrown my way just because.

I will not apologize for any wrongdoings I've not a hand in. That's like a law-abiding black man having to apologize for the Ferguson riots when he never stepped foot in the town or talked about it. I will not apologize for simply being. Yes, there are things in the pro-GG side that I have found abhorrent, but I will not apologize on behalf of the extremists on our side. I will only apologize and attempt to make amends for any of my wrongdoings, and no one else's. If emailing advertisers about why I refuse to purchase their products due to this event puts me in the wrong, then I don't wanna be right.
 

Nirallus

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renegade7 said:
Some criticism of my own side, I have to apologize for some of the toxic behavior that's come out of the anti-GG side as well. I disagree, in some ways rather strongly, from some proponents of the GG movement. However, mailing loaded syringes to people is criminal and absolutely unacceptable. The term "Social Justice Warrior" originated to describe some of the more aggressive (read: crazy) people on tumblr and occasionally in the LGBTQ acceptance movement (though they have much better PR organization so the crazy ones normally don't stay in the spotlight long), the people who say things like "Check your god damn cishet privilege, you don't know what it's like being a transethnic Japanese girl with social anxiety!" if you forget to use their preferred pronouns or this one lady who made a blog about "smart privilege" (it's inactive now, but if you Google search it you can find a cached clone of it if you're up for a laugh) advocating that everyone who is "smart" should be forced to become "transneuroregressive" by being force-fed marijuana, cocaine, and alcohol until they're no longer "smart privileged", and saying things like "grammar is oppression" and accusing you of "social rape and murder" if you correct her (or whatever the preferred pronoun was) flagrant spelling and grammar mistakes. There's crazy and violence on both sides of this particular fence, and until people can choose to be civil, it's not going to be anything but another flash in the pan internet meme and any hope for cleaning up game journalism a little will be fruitless.
A major part of why this blew up in the first place is that some of us on the GamerGate side see that same language, cleaned up for academia, in the blogs and communications of Silverstring and DiGRA. It's present in articles from Kotaku to Cracked, from columnists who are either hypersensitive or disingenuous.
 

DC_78

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BreakfastMan said:
Funny I think gamers have condemned the extremists too.

http://www.change.org/p/the-gaming-industry-please-stop-the-hate

"Gamers believe that everyone, no matter what gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religion has the right to play games, criticize games and make games without getting harassed or threatened. It is the diversity of our community that allows games to flourish.

when we see threats of violence or harm in comments on Steam, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook or reddit, we ALWAYS take a minute to report them on the respective sites.

WHENEVER we see hateful, harassing speech, take a public stand against it and make the gaming community a more enjoyable space to be in.

We are asking indie developers, AAA developers, and other folks to stop branding gamers as neckbearded, misogynistic, hatefueled, ignorant, homophobic, idiots.

While hate exists in ALL demographics, gamers are no exception. However like most demographics, most gamers are kind, open minded, good hearted and love our fellow gamers.

Stop the hate."

This was 24 days ago or so and has over 9000 signatures. Where have you been Breakfastman?
 

BloatedGuppy

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Irick said:
I have to disagree with this only on the technical terms. You really shouldn't ever be dealing with individuals, or groups when you are discussing an idea. You should be dealing with the idea.
We're getting very esoteric here, but I'm referring to discussions or interchange between two people. You address the person. You don't address them like they were a cause taken human form.
 

Irick

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MarsAtlas said:
I've been a member of The Escapist since 2008[footnote]did not create this account to dodge a ban or anything, just wanted a new username[/footnote]. I'm 21 years old and have been playing games for 20 of those years - I think my first game was the Atari game Tempest. By the time I was six, I was fragging my father with the Flak Cannon and getting beheaded by his Ripper in Unreal Tournament. I have no education past high school and am trying to learn programming skills in my own time. I'm planning to make a move across the country when I've got a sizable enough sum of money to spare.
I don't know if you have much experience in the basics, but I could recommend http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Logic-Design-Comprehensive-Farrell/dp/0538744766/. It's a text book, and more recent versions are still in wide use. It will introduce a lot of the high level conceptual topics in programing that will make picking up languages much easier down the line. From there I'd probably recomend learning one of the unity languages, unityscript, boo or C# and then just messing around with their GDK.

MarsAtlas said:
While I'll call myself a gamer amongst people unassociated with gaming, I avoid the term among, well, gamers, for a multitude of reasons. I've had a lot of bad experiences in regards to being targeted for identifying as a gamer, especially among the gaming community as a "fake girl gamer". Ever have your Xbox Live account spammed with hundreds of hateful messages every day for a month? As such, I don't generally entangle myself in gaming communities. I'm also not fond of the term "gamer" because apparently, to many people, that means I play games for a very specific reason, and other reasons that I may not are considered invalid.
You're a gamer. You play games, you contribute to the discourse and you know the history. You are a gamer. No one can tell you any different. I understand the connotation that you see, but this is one of the things I think is worth fighting for. The inclusive definition of gamer is important. We can't let it be mutated to just mean those hateful immature parts of the xbox live community. It's our name, not theirs.
MarsAtlas said:
I guess I would fall into the anti-GamerGate crowd, for a few reasons. First of all, being more familiar with journalism and punditry than the average person, I think that many accusations about supposed nepotism and corruptions are based in severe ignorance of how journalism functions. You just cannot be a journalist without networking, without forming relationships, and that is really the primary reason I've not pursued any endeavors in journalism despite having a passion for it - I'm not a people person. I think its unreasonable to expect relationships to not form, based on the fact that its both necessary to the profession but because the practicioners are human - its inevitible in either instance. I trust most people to pardon themselves or have a disclaimer when they believe that there is a conflict of interest, because the people doingthis believe in what they're doing. Additionally, a measure of collusion is to be expected, as journalists struggle with how to reconcile journalistic ethics with personal feelings and beliefs.
Your points are valid, and definitively do address individual claims. Your perspective may be very valuable in this instance, and I am glad that you shared it. I do think, however, that there are pretty clear violations of journalistic ethics going on in the games media as a whole. I do agree that it's hard not to have a relationship with venders, developers, etc. That sort of professional networking is entirely expected. However: I do think that efforts need to be made to communicate any relationships that might seriously impact a story. One of the cardinal rules in journalism is never become the story. When you are too close, if you and the developer go and drink beer every friday or anything of the kind, you need to disclose that, and I think that means that you need to be able to give the story to another journalist when you get too close to be objective.

MarsAtlas said:
Second, I believe that GamerGate is being heavily influenced not by a genuine desire for trasparency, but as a reaction against the growth of the medium into something more meaningful. Case in point, those "Gamers are dead" articles are being completely overblown. In fact, I think that they've proven their point in the past month - the identity "gamer" no longer really means anything in the gaming community because of how the medium is expanding. We have "gamers" who just wants to roll around in stompy robots with their mind shut off, we can have "gamers" who want the medium to grow into itself and for games to become increasingly artistic and meaningful and less products, we have "gamers" like myself to have both, we have "gamers" who just don't know what to think, and more. Yet people took that as an affront to them personally, because somebody else values gaming for different reasons. They don't want people evaluating the games for any depth, and while much of the reaction against people like Anita Sarkeesian is for her personal ideology, a lot of it is because she's treating them as representations of our culture rather than toys. People get labeled stuff like "SJWs" not even necessarily for what their specific beliefs are, but because they are applying their beliefs to gaming. Its a culture war about the future of gaming, and needless one, at that, since there will always be room for brainless games made as for-fun products - hell, while you'll see me championing things like Cart Life and Gone Home, the only MMO I play, which I play almost everyday, is Mechwarrior Online, where you run around in giant tanks with legs shooting lasers, missiles, explosive ammunition and lightning bolts purely for the sake of shooting other people in the face with lasers and lightning bolts.
Well, I have to disagree with you (obviously) but thank you, very much, for prefacing this as an opinion. I disagree with the assertion that the backlash to the gamers are dead comment is part of a section of the fandom dying. I think it is because of genuine concern with how gamers are represented in the media. I've made the comparison to hackers a few times and I really do think that we should meditate on what happens when an identity becomes debased. I think gaming has always been and always will be an inclusive hoby. I think that, as a whole, gamers are accepting regardless of gender, race, sex or other. I can point to recent ethnographic studies that seem to support this view.

I may disagree with Anita Sarkeesian methodology, but I don't think that her voice should be silenced. Critical thinking is always good, and I welcome gaming under the feminist lens. I just wish that she would spend less time with the negative criticism and would show those games that seem so wanting to converse with her. We have games like Mirror's Edge and Portal as well as Gone Home and Glitchhackers that are so much better, they want to say something. Now, I'm pretty post modern in my viewpoints on art. So I agree that her criticism is legitimate, I agree that it adds to the text, but it's just so negative... and gaming isn't. I feel that gaming is and should be celebrated for its diversity. I think it's unfortunate that you had such a poor experience, and I hope that we can address that portion of our subculture.
MarsAtlas said:
Third reason, the awful standards of evidence held by many GamerGate proponents. So many people have conjured up a conspiracy theory because, le gasp, mostly independent people in what is really a small and fairly personal industry know each other! We all know that people can't hold themselves to any standards of decency unless they're being held accountable for their actions, which is why all atheists have no morals, after all. Give me a break. Then, compare that to everybody sporting a Vivian James avatar, who are supporting a group that has made baseless claims against Zoe Quinn, yet people took them at their word because "Zoe Quinn is a sociopath hur hur hur". So on one side of the coin, there's a proposition of a conspiracy theory with all these lines about how they knew each other or how they didn't act a way they were supposed to, which is pretty much the same bullshit as this:
Woah now.
Woah.
Come on. Lets engage civilly. I understand being upset but these concerns have legitimate counterpoints. I've mentioned that even Jim Sterling has addressed the issue of censorship being particularly bad on the independent scene. He goes on to say that this may be because of the more personal nature of the game... but we still need to call them out on it. I agree that they shouldn't have to deal with harassment, but this seems like generalization of a side that could have very legitimate points. I don't have any real interest in the whole Zoe Quinn vs The Fine Young Capitalists thing, so I can't address your points there, but I have the feeling that this is some oversimplification.
MarsAtlas said:
*snip*

Then, on the other side of the coin, they're allying themselves with a Breitbart writer, really? A publication that became known for their tampering of facts to fit their agenda, which has continued to do so unapologetically, is your ally, really?
I have no idea what Breitbart is, or how it ties into this.
MarsAtlas said:
Fourth, and final point, lack of organization. There is nepotism and corruption in the games industry and games media because it is present everywhere. Many people don't even realize that they're partaking in it. Yelling about it on Twitter isn't going to solve anything. Asking for people to be fired for basic journalistic practices isn't going to solve anything. Boycotting sites for publishing opinion pieces isn't going to solve anything. Organizing will. Organizing will allow the people for whom this is about journalism to distance themselves from the people that this is a culture war, it allows them to make a stated goal, and to make a concerted effort that will try to expose, mitigate and prevent corruption rather than sit around getting into fights with 140 characters.
Yes, it's present everywhere. That doesn't mean we have to deal about it. Yes, an individual yelling about it isn't going to do much, but if we have something like this in the limelight, then we might just have change. A call for organization is a good idea, but a grassroots cause is also a nice talking point. I really think we need to engage openly with journalists, asking them to comment on the situation. I applaud those who have, but I dislike that most of them seem to be begrudging. We should address abuse and harassment. We should address transparency and we should defend our subculture against demonization. The fact that these points have bubbled up at the same time means we should give both of them coverage. The censorship being done on a wide scale really doesn't help though.
MarsAtlas said:
There's been attacks against people on the GamerGate side for the perception of being misogynists, or "neckbeards", or racists or whatever, and its unacceptable. When whoever it was said that GamerGate proponents were "worse than ISIS because at least ISIS is honest about their goals", I called his ass out on that, and when he wrote an article strawmanning GamerGate proponents are emasculated teenage boys, I called that out for the bullshit it is.
You are right to call extremists out. I will call out people who unfairly criticize or attack rather than discuss. This is a conversation for everyone to be in. Fuck the exclusionists, seriously. You are a gamer, your viewpoint is unique and it has value for anyone who takes the time to listen. This is _our_ community. Not theirs, not what people tell us it is. It is what we make it, through interactions like these.

I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.
 

Tankistas

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Hello everyone, long time lurker on this site, but recent happenings have made me wish to join the discussion. I am Pro-GG.

About me:
I am a 26 year old PhD student in physics, hailing from a eastern European post-communist background. Although I always saw myself as a gamer, I always kept it to myself. Being vocal about it would have been social suicide in my background. None of my friends were gamers, more representing jocks or delinquents (if I had to pigeonhole them according the pop culture taxonomy) and I also played those parts pretty well.

I have been gaming since the NES days, moving on to the SEGA Genesis and onto PS1 after that. But once I got a taste of PC gaming, I never looked back. There are a lot of games I enjoyed only for the experience and the journey, but the games that stuck to me the most were the ones which offered complexity to be uncovered. I was mesmerized by Mortal Combat 3 on the Genesis, not because I enjoyed competitive games, but because I was so intrigued to figure out all the moves of all the characters, how they interact with each other and the like. It is not difficult to understand then why I moved on to PC gaming and to strategy games. Homeworld was the most mind absorbing example. All the ships, their technology and the space exploration background blew my tiny mind. Truly, one of the best games ever. I still play high quality games that come my way, regardless of genire, sadly I do not have the time to experiment like I used to anymore.

---------

Why I support GamerGate:
During the last several years I witnessed a strong and unidirectional change in game critique. I disliked the way most sites made clumsy attempts at critique based on racial or sexual politics. Critique, that rang completely hollow for someone like me, who came not from a first-world background. The critique itself was not the problem - I was always interested in what Adam Sessler had to say and had no problem considering his views on politics; when the Sarkeesian videos came out I just found them poorly researched and I felt that her approach to critique mirrored the dismissive, standoffish way in which teachers and grown ups would criticize my hobby without any first hand experience engaging with it - regardless I did not write a single comment on AS, she had a right to do whatever she wanted to do. But the shear volume of identity politics, unsubstantiated sexual misconduct articles, political slants in reviews and lack of alternatives made me turn away from these publications, rather to look at message boards and youtube for game discussions.

When the ZQ story broke I just had a chuckle and payed it no attention. What made me care and maintained my engagement was:

1. Confusion at the mass deletions on reddit, on gaming sites;
2. Disappointment at the single front the gaming press presented to it's audience on social media, with shit flinging and megalomania abound;
3. Shock and anger that journalists would just let the TFYC charity project burn in order to maintain the narrative;
4. I was incredulous at the barrages of gamer obituaries launched by the major sites;
5. It seemed highly unfair the way certain indie developers with journo connections could get as much exposure as a AAA dev, while other hard working indie devs, especially outside the US where ignored. Polytron and IGF links were just icing on the cake.

All of this and the persistent lack of engagement from the press with their audience on these questions makes me want to stay on GG until this changes.

----------

As for the unpleasant stuff:
Like someone mentioned, I can't apologize for things which are beyond my control, But I want to share the things that I feel bad about happening in GG. Specific things are - Obviously, I do not condone harassment of any kind. Furthermore I really dislike the way some people under GG just fling criticism at people without double-checking - LianaK is a good example, she is not an ally and not an enemy, we should be able to accept neutrality without badgering people to take our position hook line and sinker. Additionally, I can understand how #GamerGate people getting involved in industry people untagged twitter conversations may seem as obnoxious, despite twitter being a public forum. It just gives GG an air of fanaticism. Lastly, I also dislike the way we sometimes engage our opposition - dropping truth bombs in the form of long arrays links with copy-pasted forum post text. This is just not a good debate tactic, people feel like they are debating a radio, so they just tune out. I suppose there are things I have missed. Thanks for reading.

EDIT: Fixed spelling
 
Sep 15, 2014
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Ehh, I don't really like talking about myself, but if it'll help to humanize my side of the divide, I suppose I'll chime in.

I've played video games since I was a wee lad. I gravitated naturally to them, being an introverted and socially anxious child who liked to tune out reality. The first one I can remember playing was, believe it or not, Super Mario Bros. on the NES. It was one of those combo cartridges, and it also had Duck Hunt on it, which I found challenging but fun using the old light-gun.

Without going into terrible personal detail, my family was not wealthy and we moved around a lot, so I've played a lot of games on a lot of different platforms that belonged to other people when I was a kid. When our situation finally stabilized, the first gaming device I ever called my own was a GameBoy, and my first gaming obsession was Pokemon (Blue Version, Squirtle starter represent!). It would not be my last. I'd go on to own an N64 on which I became a Starfox ace and lose myself for hours messing around in the paintings of Mario 64. I then moved on to the Xbox, on which I played what I'd consider my favorite RPG of all time, if not my favorite game of all time - TES 3: Morrowind (>inb4 lel xbone version). I also delved into the world of FPSes with the first game I ever played socially, Halo. I still consider Halo: CE and Halo 2 to be the best games in the series, and I had some of the best times of my childhood pwning the shit out of my friends in Halo 2 at this one LAN party where we divided (I think?) 16 people into 2 teams. Everyone wanted me on their team. I had never been more popular up to that point, shit was cash.

I eventually traded out my old Gameboy for an Advance, and started to re-discover the joy of PC gaming (I had played Kommander Keen and Rogue on other people's PCs in the past, as well as Oregon Trail on old early-90s Macintosh desktops in elementary school.) I mainly stuck to RTSes, since I had an interest in history and militaria. Warcraft 3, Starcraft, and Medieval Total War were my mainstays. I suck terribly at RTSes (it's the multi-tasking...I'm just not quick-witted or coordinated enough) but I love them anyway. That was about it before I left high-school. Afterwards, a lot of crazy shit happened and I moved around a lot again, this time without my family. I owned a PS2 for a short time and played Final Fantasy X as well as FFTactics, neither of which I completed (got close in FFX, but Tactics was just plain hard) and a few other titles including a Ratchet and Clank game. Since that I haven't personally owned a gaming platform but have been blessed with the opportunity to keep up with gaming regardless, playing all the major consoles that have come out. I mostly stick with FPSes and RPGs, and RTSes or turn-based games on PC.

As for why I support #GamerGate, at first it was simple sympathy with my fellow 4channers. I trusted them, as they were among the most passionate investigators in the early days, with "Quinnspiracy" threads (as they were called before Adam Baldwin helpfully gave us a Twitter tag to use) reaching hundreds of replies an hour and 404ing nonstop. Every day brought fresh evidence and outrageous happenings. They were uncovering massive breaches of ethics and concerted political scheming in an industry that produced some of the best memories of my childhood. Quickly, though, my interest turned political, which I am not at all ashamed to admit. The collusion of gaming journalists and indie devs was revealed to be part of what I consider merely the last step in a century-long takeover of academic, governmental, and cultural institutions by progressivism. Call me a nutjob if you like (verbally, under your breath, since name-calling is against the rurus here). It's all related, to me. Resisting the blatant and widespread censorship of discussion in gaming is only part of a larger cultural war, and it's imperative to me that we win.

I can't really apologize on behalf of individuals who decided to try to make this issue personal by attacking and harassing the opposition, but for the sake of the spirit of OP's thread, I will say this: you can be political, even rabidly partisan, and still treat your opponents with respect. Threats and personal attacks are unnecessary and uncalled for, especially when you have the truth on your side.
 

LemonSqueezy

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I wrote a REALLY long post in another thread, so I'm just going to quote the relevant parts. You can click on my user name below if you want to read the whole thing.

LemonSqueezy said:
A few weeks ago, I heard this story about a guy who spewed forth a very long and revealing story of his relationship with a developer on a blog. I blew it off, a typical social media attention hungry dude.

And then I actually read the zoe post. Did you?

I read the words of a man who, if even a quarter of what was written is true, was a victim of domestic abuse.

I saw the story of a woman who, not only slept with her boss, but an author who wrote about her online with no disclosure. How is this professional, do they not have any ethics? In ANY other industry everyone involved in the affair would have been fired, lest there be a lawsuit. Journalists get fired if it even sort of looks like there might be an issue.

I saw bile flung at the man for revealing the personal details of their relationship.

I read that we shouldn?t question the developer and the abused should never have made that information public. I was told it was none of my business and that I was a horrible person for even reading about it.

I saw VICTIM SHAMING coming out of the keyboards of a bunch of women.

I saw a double standard and started asking questions and looking at why these people were protecting this developer. Why isn?t this as big a deal as Wardell?s harassment suit, or any of the other men who have been run out of the tech industry recently for even the HINT of impropriety? When a man in the industry does what this developer did, he is dragged through the mud and run out on a rail.

The Fine Young Capitalists, whose project I had just learned about, had their indiegogo campaign (raising money to develop a game created by a woman) hacked or taken down in some way. I don?t think anyone is 100% sure what happened or will be sure without lawsuits, but that same developer partially took credit. What the hell? They are raising money to bring more women into gaming and donating the profits of the game to a charity. What?

...And then I was told that the culture and the people I love were dead.

...And the censorship began.

My voice as a female gamer was taken away by almost every site except the escapist. The escapist, tumblr and twitter were the only places to go and discuss this issue.
So no - not apologizing...

There are claims of harassment all around - except that I really only see trolling of 2 little know women before all this started on the anti-gg side and a sea of obvious spam bot accounts trolling everyone.

There are men and women who support equality and diversity in the games industry on the pro-gamergate side who are losing their jobs and being harassed. They are being trolled and threatened across social media, but most especially on twitter where you can only communicate via bumper sticker. It makes my heart break.
 

Lord Garnaat

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I've been gaming since I was a young boy with a Nintendo 64, and since then I've always tried to remain close to the gaming industry. I'm a 20 year old student currently learning about history, political science, and literature at my local college, and it's my hope to become a lawyer and a politician later in my life. I consider myself a liberal, a Brony, and a Catholic, and thus I feel that one must not only stand up for those who are disregarded and looked down upon, but that one must also treat all people with dignity and respect.

I support GamerGate because I see a news media that has, in recent times, become too lax, too unobservant, too insular, and too removed from its audience, and I feel that this only serves to hurt all of us.

When I first heard about the movement now called GamerGate, I was intrigued. The accusations made on this very forum about Zoe Quinn caught my attention, but if the issue had been with her alone I would have likely just said, "Well, she did something wrong", and moved on. It was the other claims, however, that made me interested: the close relationships between developers and press, the disregard for journalistic ethics, the absolute refusal to allow people to even ask if the accusations had merit. It concerned me, but at the same time I was not ready to jump in. You see, I had heard these claims of corruption in the gaming media for years, and had never given them much thought. This time seemed serious, but not so serious that it warranted my immediate support - approval that the questions were being asked, yes, but I didn't have the urge to begin boycotting or writing posts like, well, this one. I would wait, and see where it led from there.

It was only after the barrage of articles from sources I once held respect for that I throw what little weight I had behind this movement. I am proud of my place in the gaming community, and I am proud to call myself a gamer. And when words like "Gamers are Dead", "vermin", "subhuman", "sexist", "trash", and other slander were thrown about, and directed at the community that I hold so dear, it raised extremely troubling questions. Where is the professionalism in this circle of "professional gaming journalism"? Is such a massive assault of generalization, of vile insults, of crass mudslinging a sign of "professional gaming journalism"? And how can these sites claim to represent the views of gamers - to genuinely report on the issues they care about, to inform and enlighten them about the hobby they love - if they hold such a marked contempt for the very people they are meant to write for? And even more, how can they claim to be journalists - as opposed to glorified bloggers - if they disregard even the most basic principles of reporting?

A common complaint I see leveled at GamerGate is that it is a mere reactionary movement, that it is the result of a gaming community that has not adapted to new times and struggles to accept change. To me, though, it is gaming journalism that has failed to adapt. Once it was a tiny, niche media that cooperated within itself as a matter of survival, and such an environment of insular friendship led to close ties between each other and with the gaming industry. This was not necessarily a bad thing, at the time. But gaming has grown so much larger than that now, and gaming journalists still cling to this old and outdated paradigm: without any kind of regulation or adherence to a larger standard, this reporting scene has matured without regard to proper ethics, becoming more and more clique-ish, more entrenched, more resistant to any outside voice that asks them to clarify, change, or explain.

I see people who say that such close ties are irrelevant, or even necessary: why does it matter if developers and journalists are friends, and who is to say that it is wrong? After all, "networking" is needed for a job in journalism, and private life is private life. I understand their objections, but ultimately journalism needs to be constrained by proper regulations and guidelines to ensure that what we write and what we read is the truth, and not just a result of our personal beliefs or bias. When journalists form close friendships, even romantic relationships with the people they are meant to report on, that is a conflict of interest. When journalists accept lavish gifts and expensive parties from the people that they are meant to report on, that is a conflict of interest. It doesn't matter how much attention said journalists give to the people they form these ties to, and it doesn't matter if they don't feel it affects their work. What matters is that we enforce standards like this, in all forms of journalism, to ensure that an objective and positive media is not compromised by personal feelings, personal bias, or personal bonds.

I condemn the actions of any man who using harrassment or hate to pursue this goal, and from the looks of things in this thread, it would seem that many others in this movement do as well. I have never encountered a supporter of GamerGate who approved of such radical actions, but it would be naive of me to pretend that they do not exist. I am against such behavior now, I always have been against such behavior, and I always will be against such behavior.

But what I hope for most is this: that even those who do not support this movement are able to agree with our core goal. A professional and objective media should be the goal of everyone, not just this group or that. Whatever your opinion of us might be, it is my greatest desire that you still keep in mind what we need from each other: an informed gaming community, and an informative gaming media. Ethics in journalism are not for you or I alone: they are for every person in a community that holds a hope for truth and true justice.

So long live the gaming community, I say.
 

AvtrSpirit

New member
Oct 18, 2012
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I was so sure this thread would go up in flames in the first page. But despite a few sparks and embers, people are still joining the conversation in good faith. Makes my heart grow 1.25 times larger.

For those who do not want to apologize: The purpose of this thread is not to lay blame or make you feel guilty. It is to build a bridge between the two sides. This is based on empathy. If you are being defensive ("Sure bad stuff happened, but I didn't do it, so whatever"), then no bridge is being built. If you feel uncomfortable apologizing, then show empathy in other ways ("I want to let the other side know that I feel badly for those of them who were attacked" or "It really sucks that you had to put up with abuse"). Let's not lose sight of Sethran's awesome mission. Let's keep building this bridge!

#Gamer here. I'm a young IT professional of South Asian origin (I know, really living up to the stereotype here). I've loved gaming since Crash Bandicoot: Warped and Age of Wonders. I really like RPGs and Turn-based Strategy games. I started getting into board games since early last year. Now I'm addicted. Still love Dominion and Pandemic. And if you are with 5+ people, there is nothing like playing three rounds of "We didn't playtest this at all". I was a bookworm throughout high school and wish I had kept up with reading in university. I also have intense feelings for the game "Mark of the Ninja" that go well beyond conventional love.

On the whole, I am anti-#GamerGate. I do actually want a conversation about Journalistic Ethics, but I definitely don't want to have a conversation about Journalistic Ethics: How to Beat Back the Scourge of SJWs. That's the problem with GG that it is inextricably linked to the denouncing of social issues in video games. I'm not talking about harassment here because I firmly (maybe foolishly) believe that everyone on this thread is anti-harassment. I am talking about the more moderate voices who decry "political agendas in our games". There has always been a subset of gamers that has been uncomfortable with the idea of games having social meaning outside of the core engagement of fun. I feel that with GG they have found a way to (semi-)legitimize their claims. So, for every GG comment that is about journalistic integrity, there is another comment about journalistic integrity and how SJWs are threatening our industry.

Apology time: For anyone hurt by any of my posts, on any website, I apologize. For those of you who felt personally targeted by the "Gamers are dead" articles, I feel bad that you had to go through that. Most of you (and definitely everyone reading this thread) are much better people than what those articles tried to paint you as. And specifically to TotalBiscuit and other moderate, level-headed voices, I do apologize on the behalf of anti-GG group for passionate comments that were out of line.
 

raze2012

New member
Aug 31, 2014
1
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Whatevs, I guess.

Pro-gamergate. gaming since 7-8. Started with Pokemon on portables, and FF7/8 on consoles. Pretty much fell in love with Japanese games, their art style, and their cheesy morals, to the point where it invisibly guided me to where I am currently studying Computer science in university (3rd year/4). Possibly want to be a game dev, but Comp. Sci. is a huge field. I'm keeping my options open.

Ironically enough, I got in for the censorship and not the press (yeah, Kotaku can say I am dead for as long as they want. I trust the dictionary's definition more than theirs). Unfortunately, I realize that this side-goal has to be accomplished before my true goals can be realized. I was lurking that 23k reddit thread that got taken down and was wondering what the hell was happening. And I finally give in to researching this silly sex-scandal and fall down the rabbit-hole (and honestly, I think I'm still falling).

Seeing Jayd3fox being harrased mere hours after watching her parody video pretty much triggered me to speak up from my 5 years of lurking. I will fight for artistic and creative freedom to the death. If you disagree, fine leave your comment. If you are trying to censor this, you are the scum of the earth. There are many strong topics I disagree with (anybody that says strawberry jelly is better than grape can go perform an impossible sexual act upon themselves), but I just say "I disagree" and politely wait for a response or leave.

Yeah, Harrasment has happened to pretty much anyone remotely involved with this and it angers me because I don't lurk to hear people say they're scared. And there have been many false flags, though these are luckily shut down pretty quickly (LOL anyone remember James Russell, PH.d?) I'd apologize, but 2 things:

1. IRL issue, but there have just been too many times where I apologized for people I didn't know nor could control for actions THEY felt no remorse towards. And somehow I get the heat they deserve. Same situation here; the people who do this are just living under the bridge riling up as much chaos as possible, and are the antithesis of what I want out of this. Screw them.

2. Actions speak louder than words. I'm taking my own responsibility and reporting the hell out of these trolls in my way. I don't care what side you are on; if you are saying these stupid things, you are blocking my discussion and must be shut down. Seriously everybody, report those asses.

End of the day: I'm here so I can get back to my lurking of people who can freely voice their minds. The name calling, shadowbanning, and echo chambers have got to stop, for both sides. Seriously, when the best place to have a conversation with dissenters is YOUTUBE, you know something is wrong (and somehow, no one has actually called me a name there, unlike the infamous reports...).

also, based tyrone:


remember folks:

We are of all genders, skin colors, sexual orientations, cultures, creeds, ages, education levels and social classes
To you, those things should divide us
Yet here we stand, united.

Because we are not divided by those identities we didn't choose
We are united by the one identity we did choose.

We are Gamers
We are alive
I don't care what side you are on in this. If you can civilly post your thoughts and opinions and are passionate enough to post about it, you ARE a gamer. And you're the kind of voice I want to hear.
 

Jung Frankenstein

New member
Sep 16, 2014
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Ok, well, quick and dirty. I'm Nick. I'm 26 and a straight white male, progressive-leaning when it comes to politics in general. I have a degree in English, which as you can tell is making all my words extremely valuable. Annnnd I dunno. I'm gonna be a lawyer, actually takin the LSAT here in a couple days. I've been reading up on the whole GG thing during study breaks, actually. Oh, and I've been playing games since I was in the single digits. I don't remember when it started, but I distinctly remember delaying the entire family leaving for vacation because I'd just gotten to Casino Zone on Sonic 2. It's been constant ever since then. Have both PS3 and 360, prefer 360 for games and PS3 for just about everything else. And I'm new here, because I've been a lone gamer (prefer single-player anythings) and nowhere has really felt comfortable other than the Escapist. After this whole thing, I'm sticking with them.

My take on GamerGate has been basically to go the academic route, break it down into pieces and examine both sides, and I've come down (mostly) on the pro-GamersGate side.

You almost HAVE to take an academic view on this, because only by being critically objective are you gonna find anything of use in this whole discussion. My reasons:

Anita: Great points, awful delivery and argument, awful dealing with critique (one of the hallmarks of true academic work). Thus, I see her point but disagree with her overall approach. It's abrasive and dishonest. I'm talking specifically about the Hitman-stripper thing here. No one in the argument seems to understand that it would break any game to make it all-inclusive. That's all that needs to be said. "Yes, Anita, good point. You do realize that games work via mechanics? It's not like strippers are the only NPCs you can kill." End of that discussion. But female tropes? Of course they exist; they exist in all genres, and for both genders. I think a lot of people misunderstood Magic Mike. I took it as objectifying males in the same way that females are usually objectified, and I was kind of offended that I would be compared to Channing Tatum. It made me think about my male privilege. So yes, the points have veracity. She needs to learn how to present an argument though. There are rules.

Zoe: I find it awful that her personal life was used to start this. That said, movements change focus all the time. As far as I can tell, it hasn't been about JUST her for a long time. She's just the match that lit the pile of flammable gasoline-covered things that populate gaming. I just wrote here earlier today that I noticed awhile ago that Official XBOX mag only gave out low scores to really awful games. The average was at least 7 or higher, and I noticed this on my own, just from reading more than one mag. When I first heard about the Zoe thing (3-4 weeks ago), I started looking into it, and yes, the blog post is dirty laundry. Everybody has fucked up relationships, man. But the point of the Kotaku guy kind of got to me. Do I know for sure anything happened? I'll admit, I don't know. But there is evidence (K&L firing) that this kind of stuff is a bigger deal than the industry is making it out to be.

Nepotism: I kind of already covered this, but I wanted to discuss it bigger than just the Zoe thing (because it is bigger, so bringing her back into the convo is kind of pointless at this point). There seemed to be a pretty big circling of the wagons after this stuff came out. I know Reddit didn't look good, but given how the internet gaming community sometimes reacts to women, I can understand that PERHAPS they might have just been censoring vitriol. Understand I'm going into law: "beyond a reasonable doubt" literally means you have to be 90% sure that the truth is exactly what the person arguing says it is (the prosecutor, in court; the accusers, in GamerGate). I do not believe the explanations for censoring are "beyond a reasonable doubt" solid, but I'm willing to let bygones be bygones in the name of more civil discussion.

"Death of the Gamer": Stupid bullshit. I read approximately half of one article, got the point, and moved on. It was no different for me than reading about the new Madden game I don't care about whatsoever. Wah. Stick up for yourselves, gamers! To address the thread, a lot of you start out with stuff like "I don't know, I'm just a regular guy/girl" and then immediately tell us why you're NOT a regular, boring guy or girl. That archery comment was awesome. Gamers don't need approval from the press any more than movies need critics to be good. That said, I can also see how it would be taken as a dick move. I don't think it was intended to be, but hey, authorial intent vs audience interpretation has been a thing since people first started telling stories. To use another analogy, Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange after his wife got raped. The man has written a great deal of novels, but all anyone wants to talk about is Clockwork Orange, so much so that he stopped giving out interviews unless they promised not to mention it. He intended it to be his own inner demons dealing with the rapists (Alex, the main character, is not portrayed with much sympathy even towards the end). And here people kept bringing it up to him over and over again, his wife's rape. We don't get to pick which stories of ours people like or dislike, nor do we get to dictate their reaction after we release it. Because you can't, and that fuels the hoards. They should've just apologized and not fed the trolls. (Actually, I could probably say that about both sides, really).

The movement as a whole: One thing that really irks me about the anti-GG side is that they refuse to move on from things. I don't care about Zoe at all, and I take Anita at face value. Unless you go talk to eggs on Twitter, that seems to be the general consensus. Notice no one here firebombing anyone. Disagreeing is healthy. Harassment, death threats, all that, it's ridiculous, ridiculously out of proportion, and should be condemned. Likewise, the people in power need to realize that there ARE some legitimate arguments here. Painting us all with the broad brush (looking at you, Breitbart-includer, I hate that I've been forced to be on their side, and I don't claim they represent me) hurts the discussion. You incense the intelligent and raise up the rabble. Either way, a hug is much better than a middle finger as we're walking away from each other.

I am pro-GG because I noticed the nepotism before and, as a writer and an intelligent person, I'm in favor of the time of journalism we used to have. Go google "Mencken on the Scopes trial." He basically insults every Christian believer, and yet the way he does it is so eloquent that I'd be hard-pressed (tho I'm not a believer in anything really) to defend against him. In one article, he and another journalist sneak out to a prayer meeting in the woods, and subsequently describe it as an orgy. Because it is.

You know what else is an orgy? Making 7 an average. It's an orgy of goodwill. Mencken goes out of his way to say he doesn't hate these people, just the fact that they're railroading Scopes (he always refers to him as "the infidel Scopes"). You can still be friends with people (Mencken wasn't lynched) and disagree on a great many things. We're all people though, and at the end of the day, we all have to live with ourselves. Everything we do is just an attempt to justify our existence. This got a bit existential rather quick, but that's the thing: if people choose to be gamers, let them. It's how they get through their existence. Some people want to make games. Same: more power to them. Journalists have an obligation to not be objective, as Mencken shows, but at least accurately report what's going on. Look at Yahtzee. I've never heard him ream a game for things that it didn't justly deserve. There's a reason he's so popular. If you're being paid to say things about games that your friends made, you have to keep your objectivity right up in front there. And your friends need to understand that.

There's so much more to this (the influence of big money in gaming, the way ad revenue works, the way the game systems work, the outside influence from the mainstream into gaming), but I've said enough. I don't apologize for the novel, nor for either side, but I think I've explained how I feel about things. But I do regret that women feel unsafe. Again, not sure how much of this is real and how much is biased, but I'm willing to take their word for it. I feel the same way about gamers. Everybody just needs to relax.

Oh, and the best way to deal with trolls is not to feed them. So no, we shouldn't address them. When a child is acting out because you aren't paying attention to him/her at THIS VERY SECOND, do you capitulate to them? No, because you're the adult. This goes for both sides, because both sides are guilty of taking this crap (and it is crap) and blowing it way out of proportion. Harassment should be publicly condemned (this is why I want proof of it - not so I'll believe the women, but so I can know who's responsible for making me and others like me look bad). Trolls should be ignored. This is a college-level discussion, believe it or not. There is no place for only-140-characters critique here. It HAS to be long, because it's complicated.

Side note, as a culture, I really think we need to stop focusing on twitter. Reading off tweets as news? Come on. Like letters in a magazine, except they only pick ones that have little to no subtlety in them, or add next to nothing. Women: if men are harassing you there, please report it, either to twitter or back to us. Letting it stay hidden is what ANONs want. I want to stop the abuse, but we can't stop it if we don't know where it's coming from.
 

Urthona

New member
Sep 23, 2014
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I’m new here and have been debating about whether or not I&#146d ever post. Honestly, without this post I doubt I would have. I’m a neutral with anti-gg tendencies. Maybe that makes me a cryptoantigg.

About me: I first started gaming on the Atari 2600, and I kicked ass at Yar&#146s Revenge. I loved the Ultima series that I played on my apple IIe. Both the Atari system and the IIe are still functional, btw. I can say that gaming kept me sane throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies?it was a great de-stresser after classes, tests and in the run-up to defenses. I love RTSs, 4xs, Grand Strategy and some/city sim-style games Warlords Battlecry II and (to a much lesser extent) III are still probably the ones I’ve replayed the most. Right now I’m still enjoying the hell out of Europa Universalis IV.

To gg’ers: I’m sorry for the way that gamers have been abused as a group by people from the anti-gg side. I was shocked by the vitriol that spewed forth from the gaming press, and I lost respect for a number of people permanently. Specifically, the use of abusive stereotypes that utilized the same language that gamers have had to face by those who have picked on/felt superior to them was disgusting, unprofessional and simply mean. It is not a mystery that the language from the anti-gg side was the exact same language some gamers have faced long, long before gg for simply loving a hobby. Additionally, and this really kills me, some of those attacks likely hit home with some of the people who play games?the depressed, the shy, the socially awkward, the misfits, etc.
 

AvtrSpirit

New member
Oct 18, 2012
22
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Jung Frankenstein said:
actually takin the LSAT here in a couple days.
Duuude! Don't lose your sanity over GamerGate. It'll blow over in a few months but your LSAT results might affect your whole life. I'm sure there are better ways to relax. Play (or listen to) some music. Walk around the block. Take a nap. Just don't get involved in topics that might make you lose focus.

Anyway, best of luck for the LSAT!
 

dragoongfa

It's the Krossopolypse
Apr 21, 2009
200
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Sethran said:
Pro GG here.

Hello, my name is George. I have been a gamer for most of my life, starting from the humble NES, later going to the PS1 and now being a firm follower of the PC master race. I am a game enthusiast through and through, I used to buy gaming magazines because I liked reading the opinions of people who shared the same passion as me. When I was finally able to have an Internet connection I became a follower of several gaming sites. I just love games and I love reading news about them.

I entered GG not with ZoePost (which I personally think that it depicted a sad state of affairs) but after the Gamers are Dead articles. It infuriated me that the people I followed because I felt that they shared the same passions thought so low of me and the things that I loved.

Closing I have to point out that any and all harassment is wrong, no matter where it is coming from.

Captcha: is it hot?

Yes, Captcha, yes it is.
 

2012 Wont Happen

New member
Aug 12, 2009
4,286
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Anti-gamergate. I don't have too many hobbies with most of my time being out into class, political activities, or simply hanging out with friends. I am against gamergate for the following reasons:

- The corruption of games journalism by corporate money has been a well-known fact by anybody with even a bit of sense for years. However, it was not a major issue then, and was indeed the butt of jokes, and treated with a "what can you do?" attitude.
- Corruption of games journalism only became a constant issue after the reported cause of corruption shifted from corporate corruption to irrefutably false claims about an obscure woman and her vagina made by a jilted ex
- This quick shift indicates the true motive of those who made this an issue: chauvinism. Those who follow it are not all sexist, but their campaign is based on false information propagated by sexists.

As for anti-gamergate flaws, they've done a couple of bad things, but it has not been prevalent, and it has been targeted against the gamergate group which has abundantly sent death and rape threats to a woman for invented claims. That is not to say the movement against gamergate has only targeted gamergaters who have sent out such threats, and that is not justified. However, it is still far more acceptable, not acceptable but more acceptable, to send threats to a group based on the actions of its members than to do so to a person based on made up nonsense.
 

runic knight

New member
Mar 26, 2011
1,118
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Pro #GamerGaters, let's start with you first.

I want you to give us a paragraph - doesn't have to be super detailed, just look at the one I did above, describing yourself. Tell us a little about you, about your likes and hobbies, enough for us to see you as a person and not an anonymous person behind a keyboard. Then, explain why you support #GamerGate - and try to be as amiable as possible, we don't want to spark hostilities here.

And then, I want you to admit and apologize for the things you know people associated to #gamergate have done that you find objectionable. Don't try to sweep it under the rug, don't try to ignore or hide it - your movement cannot grow if it's unwilling to acknowledge it's mistakes, or the mistakes of those who claim to support it.
Well, I will answer but I am afraid I may be a bit long-worded. It is my nature.

I am pro-gamergate.
I have been a gamer since I was 5 or so. My first system was a shared family-gift of an nes with mario 3 and I have been hooked ever since. I have played on older systems like the Atari and Commodore but was largely a standard gaming console gamer til the mid 00's where I shifted to pc and never looked back. From the start, and as a result of personal issues and being very introverted, being a gamer became an important part of how I defined myself. It helped me meet friends, explore my own ideas on morality and lose myself in my own imagination to escape the real world for a bit. It has become a culture I embrace and support and want to improve up, and has been a means for me to connect to my nieces and nephews as I share the games I loved as a kid with a newer generation and see the same love for the hobby in their eyes.

As for gamergate, I think explaining my perspective best comes from a look at what I have experienced as the ride went on. I've been with gamergate since it was just the quinnspiracy. When the initial threads popped up here about Zoe(before the fusing), I put in my two cents calling for civility about how, if allegations were true, her actions were terrible but that she did not represent feminism and thus people shouldn't use her as an excuse to attack it, even if it was low hanging fruit. I also remarked how if the accusations were true, it was a blow to women trying to be taken seriously in the industry and that was sad.

As things unfolded, I saw the reaction and censorship of discussion, the issues of conflicting interests within the gaming journalistic world, the hostility and slander of an entire group, the proclamation of gamers being dead and the full dismissal of any and all complaints as just being harassment and misogyny. I saw the rise of gamergate as a tag, and then notyourshield. I saw people hungry for information on the story change from curious to confused. From confused to frustrated. And from frustrated to angry. I saw the scope of interest shift from Zoe to her connections and past actions, to the people who allowed her to do them and settle on the ones who perpetuated the environment where it was ok to demonize and censor discussions and openly insult and slander your audience. I saw the bubbling discontent within the gaming community burst forth as gamers demanded to be treated better then they had been. I saw the funding of a pro-women gaming program, the birth of an internet icon and the beginning of the death of that icon's home. I saw people work together and gamers show off the very spirit that made me proud to identify as one. When the news would not investigate, gamers did. When the sites tried to silence, gamers yelled louder. When the media told us we were dead, gamers showed that we were very much alive.

At the early stages, I sided with those who would later become gamergate out of a simple respect for the value of a free and open forum where ideas could be talked about, and in spite of attempts to censor the discussion itself. I saw the story itself not very relevant but rather the way it was censored and attempted to be hidden as something to protest. But as it snowballed, I realized it wasn't one person trying to silence the discussion, but many, including the ones who refused to cover the story. I saw journalists with conflict of interest unable to realize what was wrong with what they were doing and some even openly gleefully reveling in that behavior, I saw the great collusion between them to protect their own at the expense of the open forum. I saw idols in the gaming world reveal themselves to be shallow or dishonest. I saw a corruption that ran deeper then I knew and realized that this driving force was likely the only chance we would have to clean up our house right for once. I saw gamers rise up and say enough was enough and as consumers united, even if not uniform in voice, shout that they would change the gaming would for the better and stick with it.

I have always been willing to admit gamergate has people I would never like or call friend. People who think it is alright to harass or threaten or dox. Hell, people who would rather win a small victory by harming just for the short term emotional satisfaction. I wont even try to say that all of them are just trolls, as I know because of the emotional response this whole ordeal has generated that some may feel their actions justified. I never considered them the driving force nor the core though, not any more the core of gamergate then trolls of any online community. Still, I do condemn those that choose such actions and always have.
I will not apologize for their actions, I have no control over them nor any ways I could have prevented what they do or did and thus it is pointless for me to try to apologize for the actions of any other. But I will acknowledge their behavior exists.
 

Sethran

Jedi
Jun 15, 2008
240
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AvtrSpirit said:
I was so sure this thread would go up in flames in the first page. But despite a few sparks and embers, people are still joining the conversation in good faith. Makes my heart grow 1.25 times larger.

For those who do not want to apologize: The purpose of this thread is not to lay blame or make you feel guilty. It is to build a bridge between the two sides. This is based on empathy. If you are being defensive ("Sure bad stuff happened, but I didn't do it, so whatever"), then no bridge is being built. If you feel uncomfortable apologizing, then show empathy in other ways ("I want to let the other side know that I feel badly for those of them who were attacked" or "It really sucks that you had to put up with abuse"). Let's not lose sight of Sethran's awesome mission. Let's keep building this bridge!
Thanks for the support Avtr - and for understanding.

Despite the doctoral defenses going back and forth in the thread, I'm actually very happy with how this thread has worked thusfar. When last I checked in it was only on page one, and I've learned a lot about my fellow Escapists just from reading their stories and reactions.

Again, if you don't want to post here you don't have to - it's completely fine to opt out.

So for those that have already introduced and begun the discussion, here's a question; How can we move past our grievances with one another?

A lot of the issues people have with #GamerGate is how individual members of the movement have treated others; specifically so-called SJWs, people who 'don't support' them, and people who simply ask questions. Is there a way to move past this? Or has the damage already been done and too extensively?

It seems to me that everyone is in favor of transparency and everyone is against harassment, so how do we shift focus from the harassment of the past and move forward to the issue we all want to fix? Is there even a way?

Edit: I would have kept responding to everyone, but you all just took off with the thread so much that I can't keep up. Thanks to everyone who responded though, I'm reading as much of it as I can!
 

Redd the Sock

New member
Apr 14, 2010
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I guess I'll bite:

I'm a financial officer pushing 40 that has played video games since the Atari 2600. I like the usual nerd stuff as well, comics, anime, MST3K. I do a lot of volunteer fundraising in my spare time for evertything from veteran services, medical research, and boys and girls clubs. I am the straight white cis male I'm accused of being, but there is one thing missing:

I was born with 5% of normal vision (uncorrectable).

If anyone asks why I support gamergate, that might be the crux of the reason. The movement has moved off meda ethics and it has become a culture war at this point, but I'm not sure it isn't a war worth having. My condition limits my life in a lot of ways: I can't drive, can't get certain jobs (unless you want to be drilled by a near sighted dentist), read with my nose in the book's spine, game inches away from a big screen TV (and still can't read all the text), keep a magnifier on hand for portable systems, have great inconveniences with software designed for a PC screen resolution I can't read, stuff like that. So when I hear someone say how oppressed they are because they aren't represented as much as they'd like, I have to resist punching the wall. I have a legitimate barrier that says "I can't" more often than I'd like in life. Most of what we get from the SJW side is more in the "It's not perfect so I don't want to, and I'll blame you for not making it perfect."

I get bitter because I play a lot of RPGs since they aren't as taxing visually, and I play a lot of female leads (doing so now actually) and yet for all the "demand" for such things online, I keep seeing comics and games that try and give them what they want sell in numbers lower than Anita Sarkesian has twitter followers. When the ZQ things first broke I paid it not mind other than to make a mental laugh at another person fallen off their moral high horse (be honest, late night comedy monologues are made of this stuff). As things moved forward, I did find enough to be concerned that the narative of the "evil boys club" was a fabrication made by clickbaiting muckrakers to lure in people happier to be mad about something than happy about something. The gamers are dead articles and other comments that had everyone arguing with what they wanted GG to be rather than talk to them and show understanding, empathy, and a willingness to accept criticism has left me with an impression of the whole debacle showing that for all the talk of building, and not taking things away, many see this as a case of the playground isn't big enough for both sides.

So when I live (and have lived with people with) a disability that puts serious limits on basic living, hearing everyone go off about every little ding to their self esteem gets bad enough, but when the tone has been it's only your self esteem that's a concern, and find myself treated like my thoughts and opinions don't now or will never matter, I see people that need to be put don't until they grow up a bit. I want everyone to get the games they want, but I see too much anger and desire to tear down than build up and be positive with the efforts made.

As for apologies, I won't apologize for actions I can't have stopped, and even then, I learned I can't control what the people around me say, do, or think, let alone strangers harassing online. The one person I think deserves an apology is Zoe's Ex to whom a disservice was done. So much of what was listed were elements of emotional abuse and all people focused on was the one section that furthered their own causes: her infidelity with people in the industry. More people really needed to look at the whole thing and ask the media if, no matter how much they want more diversity in developers, Zoe was the kind of person we should be defending, and that her plumbing is giving her a pass for some shitty things.