#GamerGate Needs Damage Control Badly (Small OP Update)

[Agayek]

I can answer your questions, though my answer is simply a personal opinion, however, one I feel is backed up by the historical views of large parts of the community.

It was actually answered in part in #189, but I'll expound a bit. First, a shit ball rolling downhill is bound to pick up stuff along the way. And while this may have been unintentional to those first pushing this, it actually works out in their favor. It's easier to pushback against blatant misogyny, but when you entangle it with actual causes worth fighting for, it becomes much harder to fight against without looking like the corrupt one. So while I'm sure that people hoped Quinn was actually guilty of a bunch of ethical breaches, it doesn't really matter anymore because other stuff has been exposed along the way. And yet Quinn is still at the center of this with the harassment and rape and death threats.

This is true, but if that's the case, why does basically everyone in the GamerGate thread here and on 4chan keep shouting down anyone who tries to drag the whole thing back to Quinn?

That's the main reason I'm disagreeing with you. People are actively going out of their way to tell anyone who brings Quinn up to shut up and stop trying to drag her into the spotlight, despite the fact that Quinn seems bound and determined to force herself into it anyway. Nobody cares about Quinn or harassing her. If you don't believe me, go into the thread here or anywhere on 4chan and suggest it, or simply just ask about her. You'll be shouted down for a shill and told in no uncertain terms to stop dragging her into something she has nothing to do with. I've seen it happen dozens of times, and every time it happens, it makes the constant claims of "it's all about Quinn" saturating the media ring a little more false.

I don't doubt at all that she's getting all sorts of nasty messages from all corners of the internet, but trolls are like that, and there's no way to stop them. There's absolutely no organized movement to harass her though, just a pack of dipshits getting their jollies.

Second, there has always been a large part of the community that has pushed back against any calls for reform in the way of diversity, or ending sexism in gaming; basically an Us v Them, with 'us' (I don't actually include myself here, but rather use it as a substitute for the aformentioned part of the community) being the people that want to maintain the status quo. Sure, some people say it's about creative freedom, but all it is is a resistance to the percieved attack on their hobby and 'Them' being everyone in gaming that wants more diversity/inclusion in gaming and non gamers that criticize the mediums community for it's general vitriol.

And I think this whole gamergate thing is just a proxy war for that. People latched onto Quinn because she considers herself a feminist and is therefore 'the enemy', and her game got some good reviews. And when all this is over, Quinn is still going to be the first thing that comes to everyones mind when #gamergate is mentioned.

Eh, yes and no. Check out the Publisher's Note that went up the other day and there's a good analogy there. Macris draws a parallel between video games and game enthusiasts, and cars and car enthusiasts. He puts it much more eloquently than I can, but the basic gist of it is that the auto industry figured out a long time ago that there's a whole bunch of different markets they should be serving (sedans for people who just need to drive, hot rods for gear heads, minivans for families, etc), while the video game industry has not, and they keep trying to sell hot rods to everyone by stripping down the engine, adding a back seat, etc, leading to a bland product that serves no market.

That's where most of the backlash against 'inclusivity' comes from. It's not 'there's women in that game, ewwwww' (see: any game with customizable protagonists, Beyond Good & Evil, Mirror's Edge, etc). It's 'they tore out the core mechanics to shoehorn in a token black guy? ewwwww'.

There's definitely a problem with representation in gaming, there's no question about that, and it's thankfully slowly shrinking as the medium grows, and there's certainly at least some subset of gamers who are actually misogynist or racist and hate the idea of inclusivity in their games, but it's a small minority, just like those people are a small minority of the wider society (seeing as the gaming audience is like 60% of the wider society, this makes perfect sense). Most gamers don't give a shit about whatever the social cause of the week happens to be and how a given game deals with it. Most gamers don't care what they're playing as long as it's fun and interesting, and they don't tend to like being told that games should sacrifice being fun and interesting in favor of championing social causes they don't give a toss about. That's where most of the backlash comes from. Not because they hate women and change.

I wouldn't call it a mob without a purpose. There is a purpose behind it, as I feel I explained above.

It's a purpose that barely anyone in the mob knows then, because as mentioned, they're putting a lot of effort into leaving Quinn out of it entirely and shouting at the people who bring her up.

 

[Jux]

This is true, but if that's the case, why does basically everyone in the GamerGate thread here and on 4chan keep shouting down anyone who tries to drag the whole thing back to Quinn?

I would say that at this point, with the whole thing being tied to Quinn so closely already, if they want to keep this going they'll do their best to publicly distance themselves from attacking Quinn and keep the threats anonymous. As for here specifically, the mod presence in that thread is pretty high, I would say that for fear of having it shut down, they're playing by the rules the escapist has set up.

That's the main reason I'm disagreeing with you. People are actively going out of their way to tell anyone who brings Quinn up to shut up and stop trying to drag her into the spotlight, despite the fact that Quinn seems bound and determined to force herself into it anyway. Nobody cares about Quinn or harassing her.

Then why is she being harassed?

If you don't believe me, go into the thread here or anywhere on 4chan and suggest it, or simply just ask about her. You'll be shouted down for a shill and told in no uncertain terms to stop dragging her into something she has nothing to do with. I've seen it happen dozens of times, and every time it happens, it makes the constant claims of "it's all about Quinn" saturating the media ring a little more false.

I have zero desire to insert myself in either of those shitholes. I argued in the thread when it was in R&P, and pretty much abandoned it when it was moved out, with the exception to check in on it now and then because I was misquoted a couple of times.

I don't doubt at all that she's getting all sorts of nasty messages from all corners of the internet, but trolls are like that, and there's no way to stop them. There's absolutely no organized movement to harass her though, just a pack of dipshits getting their jollies.

The IRC log suggests differently.

Eh, yes and no. Check out the Publisher's Note that went up the other day and there's a good analogy there. Macris draws a parallel between video games and game enthusiasts, and cars and car enthusiasts. He puts it much more eloquently than I can, but the basic gist of it is that the auto industry figured out a long time ago that there's a whole bunch of different markets they should be serving (sedans for people who just need to drive, hot rods for gear heads, minivans for families, etc), while the video game industry has not, and they keep trying to sell hot rods to everyone by stripping down the engine, adding a back seat, etc, leading to a bland product that serves no market.

That's where most of the backlash against 'inclusivity' comes from. It's not 'there's women in that game, ewwwww' (see: any game with customizable protagonists, Beyond Good & Evil, etc). It's 'they tore out the core mechanics to shoehorn in a token black guy? ewwwww'.

Can you point to a single game where core mechanics have been torn out so a minority character could be included?

There's definitely a problem with representation in gaming, there's no question about that, and it's thankfully slowly shrinking as the medium grows, and there's certainly at least some subset of gamers who are actually misogynist or racist and hate the idea of inclusivity in their games, but it's a small minority, just like those people are a small minority of the wider society (seeing as the gaming audience is like 60% of the wider society, this makes perfect sense). Most gamers don't give a shit about whatever the social cause of the week happens to be and how a given game deals with it. Most gamers don't care what they're playing as long as it's fun and interesting, and they don't tend to like being told that games should sacrifice being fun and interesting in favor of championing social causes they don't give a toss about. That's where most of the backlash comes from. Not because they hate women and change.

First, if it's true that its a small minority [citation needed], you can't argue that it isn't the most vocal part of the community. And if the gaming community wants to move away from the stereotype of the misogynistic neckbeard, people need to start speaking up, if not specifically against the assholes (though that would be preferable), at least for what it is they do value, so the dickheads stop having the biggest voice.

The problem I have with the 'gamers just don't want to sacrifice fun and interesting games for social justice' is that it's complete bullshit. I have yet to see a game where including a more diverse cast of characters would make something less fun or interesting, or even someone call for a game to be made 'less fun' for the sake of diversity and inclusivity.

 

[Agayek]

I would say that at this point, with the whole thing being tied to Quinn so closely already, if they want to keep this going they'll do their best to publicly distance themselves from attacking Quinn and keep the threats anonymous. As for here specifically, the mod presence in that thread is pretty high, I would say that for fear of having it shut down, they're playing by the rules the escapist has set up.

That seems incredibly Machiavellian and well thought-out for an internet mob. It's insanely unlikely

Then why is she being harassed?

Because she's a public figure who is both easy to harass and readily responds loudly and noisily to it. Welcome to the Internet. Anonymity leads to people being complete twats to others, especially when the target visibly reacts to it.

Though as a point of clarification, when I said "nobody" in the bit you quoted, I should have said "nobody who has been active in the discussion surrounding #GamerGate".

I have zero desire to insert myself in either of those shitholes. I argued in the thread when it was in R&P, and pretty much abandoned it when it was moved out, with the exception to check in on it now and then because I was misquoted a couple of times.

If you wish. I find it rather disingenuous to claim you know what the whole thing is about when you refuse to hear out the people talking about it, but I can't force you to.

The IRC log suggests differently.

I have no particular desire to read through 3 weeks of IRC chat logs for an internet argument, take that as an admission of whatever you want, but I have read the ones Quinn posted to Twitter, and the shots she posted by and large had nothing to do with the conclusion she drew from them (for example, a screencap of someone saying "Ok here's the plan: Don't harass Quinn, yell at the people that do and then take a screenshot of it to prove you did it" is not proof that they plan to harass Quinn. Similarly, a screencap saying "Maybe we should get Alec Baldwin involved" hours after Adam Baldwin got involved is not proof that they planned to get Adam Baldwin involved weeks ahead of time). Actually read the exchange in the images she posted and then what she says they're about, and not always but fairly often, the two are completely unrelated.

That does not fill me with confidence for her statements regarding the overall content of the logs.

Can you point to a single game where core mechanics have been torn out so a minority character could be included?

First, if it's true that its a small minority [citation needed], you can't argue that it isn't the most vocal part of the community. And if the gaming community wants to move away from the stereotype of the misogynistic neckbeard, people need to start speaking up, if not specifically against the assholes (though that would be preferable), at least for what it is they do value, so the dickheads stop having the biggest voice.

The problem I have with the 'gamers just don't want to sacrifice fun and interesting games for social justice' is that it's complete bullshit. I have yet to see a game where including a more diverse cast of characters would make something less fun or interesting, or even someone call for a game to be made 'less fun' for the sake of diversity and inclusivity.

Well, there's that article [https://archive.today/2t93l] that explicitly says:

11. We stop upholding ?fun? as the universal, ultimate criterion for a game?s relevance. It?s a meaningless ideal at best and a poisonous priority at worst. Fun is a neurological trick. Plenty of categorically unhealthy things are ?fun?. Let?s try for something more. Many of the alternatives will have similarly fuzzy definitions, but let?s aspire to qualities like ?edifying?, ?healing?, ?pro-social?, or even ?enlightening?. I encourage you to decide upon your own alternatives to ?fun? in games (while avoiding terms like ?cool? and ?awesome? and any other word that simply caters to existing, unexamined biases).

12. We don?t afford any credence to the idea that games are ?just for fun?. Games are not neutral. Anita Sarkeesian is not imposing her feminist values onto games; she?s identifying the misogynistic values that game developers have (sometimes unwittingly) incorporated into games. You don?t have to think her efforts are perfect, but what she?s doing is not inappropriate. Discovering the values expressed by games is a responsible thing to do; discouraging that practice is cowardly. We need to regularly compare our games? expressed values to our own real values. In the end, we may arrive at different conclusions about what different games mean, but we need to stop asserting that they?re meaningless.

That's a pretty clear statement that "fun" should be considered far secondary to "pro-social".

As for games, there's games like Gone Home, Dear Esther, Depression Quest, etc, that are remarkably boring to play, but have a social message so they're great or something.

 

[Jux]

I would say that at this point, with the whole thing being tied to Quinn so closely already, if they want to keep this going they'll do their best to publicly distance themselves from attacking Quinn and keep the threats anonymous. As for here specifically, the mod presence in that thread is pretty high, I would say that for fear of having it shut down, they're playing by the rules the escapist has set up.

That seems incredibly Machiavellian and well thought-out for an internet mob. It's insanely unlikely

You think it's unlikely that people realize their 600+ page thread would be shut down in a heartbeat if they went back to the 'but look how many guys she slept with!' shtick that was going on at the beginning? I wouldn't go so far as to say that every single person is in on it, I'm sure there are a number of well intentioned people going along for the ride. Just makes it that much easier to hide in the crowd.

Because she's a public figure who is both easy to harass and readily responds loudly and noisily to it. Welcome to the Internet. Anonymity leads to people being complete twats to others, especially when the target visibly reacts to it.

Though as a point of clarification, when I said "nobody" in the bit you quoted, I should have said "nobody who has been active in the discussion surrounding #GamerGate".

As it is beyond my capablities to find out if this is true, I'll leave it at that, though I think you'd have just as impossible a time proving that to be true.

If you wish. I find it rather disingenuous to claim you know what the whole thing is about when you refuse to hear out the people talking about it, but I can't force you to.

I'm not going to follow a 600 page thread just so I can sort the bullshit from the legit when I know it started as bullshit. I tried reading some of it earlier, and quite frankly, the low content posting with most people basically sharing no information whatsoever except to provide a link isn't worth my time.

Saying I'm the disingenuous one because I refuse to be doc dumped is amusing, but without merit.

I have no particular desire to read through 3 weeks of IRC chat logs for an internet argument, take that as an admission of whatever you want, but I have read the ones Quinn posted to Twitter, and the shots she posted by and large had nothing to do with the conclusion she drew from them (for example, a screencap of someone saying "Ok here's the plan: Don't harass Quinn, yell at the people that do and then take a screenshot of it to prove you did it" is not proof that they plan to harass Quinn. Similarly, a screencap saying "Maybe we should get Alec Baldwin involved" hours after Adam Baldwin got involved is not proof that they planned to get Adam Baldwin involved weeks ahead of time). Actually read the exchange in the images she posted and then what she says they're about, and not always but fairly often, the two are completely unrelated.

That does not fill me with confidence for her statements regarding the overall content of the logs.

Most of the content I looked at in the log was fact checking WHtM, as there were claims that the exerpts he pulled out were taken out of context.

That's a pretty clear statement that "fun" should be considered far secondary to "pro-social".

As for games, there's games like Gone Home, Dear Esther, Depression Quest, etc, that are remarkably boring to play, but have a social message so they're great or something.

This doesn't really answer my question. Can you point to a single game where core mechanics have been torn out for the sake of including a minority character? Second, maybe I'm getting something different than you reading that, but the guy doesn't seem to be saying that games should be made less fun for the sake of making them more pro social, only that 'fun' as a criteria isn't a great standard, based on the wide range of things that could be categorized as 'fun'.

 

[Agayek]

You think it's unlikely that people realize their 600+ page thread would be shut down in a heartbeat if they went back to the 'but look how many guys she slept with!' shtick that was going on at the beginning? I wouldn't go so far as to say that every single person is in on it, I'm sure there are a number of well intentioned people going along for the ride. Just makes it that much easier to hide in the crowd.

Oh not at all. I think it's unlikely that people intent on harassing Quinn would bother with setting up a thread like that in the first place. Why would they? Six dedicated people can endlessly harass Quinn in complete anonymity to the same level as six thousand random schmucks. All they have to do is set up shop, grab a couple proxies, and go to town. Nobody else needs to get involved. What possible benefit is there to a group of people trying to harass Quinn in orchestrating and setting up a movement specifically saying "Hey guys, shut the fuck up about Quinn already, let's talk about the real issues here"?

There's no reason I can conceive of. It explicitly works counter to their alleged purpose.

As it is beyond my capablities to find out if this is true, I'll leave it at that, though I think you'd have just as impossible a time proving that to be true.

Look at literally every public figure who has an internet presence. Any and every politician gets abuse hurled at them by the truck load. Hell, TotalBiscuit and Jim Sterling both got mountains of shit for saying "Hey guys, can we all calm down now?". Public figures incite the ire of random anonymous fuckwits who express it through verbal (or textual) diarrhea. It doesn't matter who they are.

I'm not going to follow a 600 page thread just so I can sort the bullshit from the legit when I know it started as bullshit. I tried reading some of it earlier, and quite frankly, the low content posting with most people basically sharing no information whatsoever except to provide a link isn't worth my time.

Saying I'm the disingenuous one because I refuse to be doc dumped is amusing, but without merit.

No, I'm saying it's disingenuous to insist that there's no merit and refusing to take ten seconds to use the handy resource to provide evidence to the contrary.

Most of the content I looked at in the log was fact checking WHtM, as there were claims that the exerpts he pulled out were taken out of context.

/shrug I have no idea what other people claimed. From what I saw, most of the logs she pulled were actually in context, or at least weren't improved by being taken with the surrounding conversation (though again, I don't see any of it as being particularly incriminating due to my perspective on 4chan's use of language), they just didn't match or logically lead to her conclusions. She was basically making shit up and claiming a chunk of IRC conversation about something completely different supported it.

This doesn't really answer my question. Can you point to a single game where core mechanics have been torn out for the sake of including a minority character?

Off the top of my head, no, but at the same time, I can't actually remember any games that got shit on for including a minority character. I vaguely remember there being a gun that anally probed people in Saint's Row 4 being pulled for being offensive and people getting mad about that, but that's all I can remember off the top of my head.

What games have been yelled at for including a minority character?

Edit: Actually, I just thought of something. The new COD game allows you to play as a female soldier, but as far as I've heard, there hasn't been any hooplah made about that. Why do you suppose that is?

Second, maybe I'm getting something different than you reading that, but the guy doesn't seem to be saying that games should be made less fun for the sake of making them more pro social, only that 'fun' as a criteria isn't a great standard, based on the wide range of things that could be categorized as 'fun'.

That could simply be a matter of perspective again. When I read it, I see "games aren't about 'fun' any more, they're about sending a message to your audience, and if you don't do that, you're a terrible person". If you don't, fair enough.

 

[Jux]

You think it's unlikely that people realize their 600+ page thread would be shut down in a heartbeat if they went back to the 'but look how many guys she slept with!' shtick that was going on at the beginning? I wouldn't go so far as to say that every single person is in on it, I'm sure there are a number of well intentioned people going along for the ride. Just makes it that much easier to hide in the crowd.

Oh not at all. I think it's unlikely that people intent on harassing Quinn would bother with setting up a thread like that in the first place. Why would they? Six dedicated people can endlessly harass Quinn in complete anonymity to the same level as six thousand random schmucks. All they have to do is set up shop, grab a couple proxies, and go to town. Nobody else needs to get involved. What possible benefit is there to a group of people trying to harass Quinn in orchestrating and setting up a movement specifically saying "Hey guys, shut the fuck up about Quinn already, let's talk about the real issues here"?


There's no reason I can conceive of. It explicitly works counter to their alleged purpose.

Why would anyone set up a million+ view thread that started as public shaming? That was a rhetorical question.

Look at literally every public figure who has an internet presence. Any and every politician gets abuse hurled at them by the truck load. Hell, TotalBiscuit and Jim Sterling both got mountains of shit for saying "Hey guys, can we all calm down now?". Public figures incite the ire of random anonymous fuckwits who express it through verbal (or textual) diarrhea. It doesn't matter who they are.

Not quite sure where you're going with this. Is this some variation of the 'women being harassed online is nothing special because guys get harassed too' argument?

No, I'm saying it's disingenuous to insist that there's no merit and refusing to take ten seconds to use the handy resource to provide evidence to the contrary.

At this point it just isn't worth my time. After this all dies down I'll go back and see about finding some relevant information after all the bullshit has been sifted out, but I was there at the start, and my memory is pretty damn good. As far as I've seen there isn't a short way of getting all the information quickly, at least not from a reputable source.

Off the top of my head, no, but at the same time, I can't actually remember any games that got shit on for including a minority character. I vaguely remember there being a gun that anally probed people in Saint's Row 4 being pulled for being offensive and people getting mad about that, but that's all I can remember off the top of my head.

What games have been yelled at for including a minority character?

Seriously? http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a375821/electronic-arts-urged-to-resist-gay-character-criticism.html#~oPpWErXSWaE1Ub

This wasn't that long ago. That aside, it wasn't really my point that gamers are yelling at games for including minorities, just that they yell against other gamers pushing for inclusivity for the sake of being inclusive. This is a tangent, but you see the same damn thing in the comic book industry sadly, with people poopooing Captain America being made black and Thor being a woman. Honestly I feel like there is a lot of overlap between the two communities, based on their reaction to this kind of stuff.

Edit: Actually, I just thought of something. The new COD game allows you to play as a female soldier, but as far as I've heard, there hasn't been any hooplah made about that. Why do you suppose that is?

While the snarky answer would be 'because COD is shit', or 'because COD is late to the game on this one', I'll just go ahead and link a few articles I found reporting on this. I mean, when you say 'no hooplah', what are you expecting? Us to throw a parade for EA or something?

http://kotaku.com/why-female-soldiers-were-finally-added-to-call-of-duty-1142063196

http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/17/call-of-duty-ghosts-and-female-soldiers-%E2%80%93-what-took-so-long/

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/15/cod-ghosts-female-soldiers

http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/14/4621446/call-of-duty-ghosts-multiplayer-adds-female-soldiers-new-modes

http://www.sentralgamer.com/female-soldiers-spark-sexist-controversy-in-cod-ghosts/ <~ This is is especially good, for the comments the author found regarding the inclusion of female soldiers.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.825378-Call-of-Duty-Ghosts-Lets-You-Play-as-a-Woman#20020430 And from our very own Escapist.

That could simply be a matter of perspective again. When I read it, I see "games aren't about 'fun' any more, they're about sending a message to your audience, and if you don't do that, you're a terrible person". If you don't, fair enough.

I think it sort of depends on what you mean by fun. Just a hypothetical here, but I would be perfectly willing to sacrifice fun in games if fun was say... a rape simulator.

 

[Agayek]

Why would anyone set up a million+ view thread that started as public shaming? That was a rhetorical question.

And I'll give you a rhetorical answer (/Goku). The reason is, there kinda isn't one. For one, how do you get a million views on a thread that's about nothing but shaming a relatively obscure indie dev? I mean that seriously by the way. How do you get a million unique views on a thread when it's all about shaming someone. Surely you can't think 4chan is this lurking Lovecraftian horror with tentacles that reach so far into the internet that it can enslave the masses into doing its bidding. You can't be stupid enough to actually believe that, so it's gotta be something else. How on Earth could a public shaming be enough to create the single biggest thread in the history of the Escapist's forums?

Not quite sure where you're going with this. Is this some variation of the 'women being harassed online is nothing special because guys get harassed too' argument?

Kinda? I said "Because she's a public figure who is both easy to harass and readily responds loudly and noisily to it. Welcome to the Internet. Anonymity leads to people being complete twats to others, especially when the target visibly reacts to it.", you responded with "It's impossible to prove either way". I cited evidence supporting my claim. It's not okay that anyone gets harassed ever, but Quinn isn't being harassed because she's a woman. She's being harassed because she's a public figure on the internet. As evidence, I give you every public figure who's ever been on the internet. Every single goddamn one gets harassed, regardless of if they're from gaming, politics, religion, sociology, etc. Whenever there's a large enough audience who can be anonymous, there's going to be some twats within that audience who get their jollies by harassing the public figures. It happens everywhere. It's the unfortunate cost of being on the internet.

I'm not saying it's good or acceptable that she's being harassed. I'm saying that she's not special because of it.

At this point it just isn't worth my time. After this all dies down I'll go back and see about finding some relevant information after all the bullshit has been sifted out, but I was there at the start, and my memory is pretty damn good. As far as I've seen there isn't a short way of getting all the information quickly, at least not from a reputable source.

If you're looking for reputable sources, you can check out the Slate [http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/09/gamergate_explodes_gaming_journalists_declare_the_gamers_are_over_but_they.html] and Forbes [http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/04/gamergate-a-closer-look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/] articles about this whole kerfluffle for a pretty concise summary of what's going on with the whole affair. Both of them are pretty good, balanced looks into the whole affair.

There's also a couple breitbart articles, but they tend to lean a little heavy on the rhetoric, so I won't link them.

Seriously? http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/news/a375821/electronic-arts-urged-to-resist-gay-character-criticism.html#~oPpWErXSWaE1Ub

This wasn't that long ago. That aside, it wasn't really my point that gamers are yelling at games for including minorities, just that they yell against other gamers pushing for inclusivity for the sake of being inclusive. This is a tangent, but you see the same damn thing in the comic book industry sadly, with people poopooing Captain America being made black and Thor being a woman. Honestly I feel like there is a lot of overlap between the two communities, based on their reaction to this kind of stuff.

That article you link sounds an awful lot like gamers getting together and telling Christian activist groups to fuck off and let them be inclusive. Really not seeing how that's gamers up in arms that there's gay characters in there.

Also, this totally reminds me of a game that had a core mechanic cut out for the sake of inclusivity: Dragon Age II. They literally went through and completely threw out any sense of good writing and strong characterization specifically so that any Hawke could be any sexual orientation under the sun. It's impossible to prove they worsened the game for it, but it certainly made the characters and world seem substantially less real when literally everyone Hawke interacted with was bi-sexual and interested in him/her.

While the snarky answer would be 'because COD is shit', or 'because COD is late to the game on this one', I'll just go ahead and link a few articles I found reporting on this. I mean, when you say 'no hooplah', what are you expecting? Us to throw a parade for EA or something?

Nah, I'm expecting to have heard about the internet hate machine targeting Activision or whatever for including female soldiers. I haven't heard a negative whisper about it.

Though apparently I missed it for Ghosts, so /shrug.

I think it sort of depends on what you mean by fun. Just a hypothetical here, but I would be perfectly willing to sacrifice fun in games if fun was say... a rape simulator.

Two things:

1) Why would you want to play a rape simulator?

2) That's kinda my point. A rape simulator sounds both disgusting and having probably incredibly shitty gameplay, because it's a game made to hammer home a point first and be a game second. There's certainly a market for that, but it's not the primary one. Most people plays games as entertainment, just as most people watch movies for entertainment. There's room to have artsy or agenda-driven games, but it's never going to dominate the market, and trying to force them to is just going to cause a repeat of the 1983 crash.

 

[EyeRobotronics]

Let's talk about this whole debacle. This comment will be a lengthy ramble, likely visceral and probably, unforunately, upsetting. Read this with the knowledge that anyone with a similar history of abuse that I've had will likely remember how they felt in that moment vividly. Frankly, a flashback triggered by a seemingly innocuous post is the whole reason behind this account's creation.

Harassment is a very real issue. There is plenty of it not just online, but in face to face encounters, written word, videos, etc. Asking "why people are offensive online" is a loaded version of the simple question "why are people offensive at all". That, in turn is just the age old question of "whence comes evil?" It is persistant throughout absolutely everything which is done. Can harassment be stopped? No. Pretty simple honestly - it works, so people will do it. Yes, it's ethically wrong, yes it's terrible - but it still works. If someone stops doing something due to harassment, the harasser has won. We all know of instances where this has happened, for good and bad.

So, where has the harassment been in this gamergate movement? Well, it's certainly fair to say that a lot was initially levelled at Zoey Quinn and anyone who defended her - people just LOVE to be outraged and take it out on others, and this was no exception. Is it fair to say there's been some back? Absolutely. Is it fair to say that the harassment to Zoey shouldn't have happened at all? Absolutely. But let's just look at what's been said to the other side of the fence, because one side has been extremely well documented.

At the time of writing, supporters of so called gamergate have been called children, virgins, losers, assholes, compared to terrorist groups, misogynists, and in the case of a particularly foolish Gearbox employee, been accused of distributing child pornography. Whilst there's certainly people using this gamergate tag who are doing wrong, the amount of harassment back has also been staggering. This is what motivated the creation of this account, and why you'll probably not see anything written by me after it with such a serious tone.

WARNING: the things I'm going to describe are horrific and likely to upset anyone who's been the victim of sexual abuse. Sorry. I truly am.

Before we delve much further, I'll tell you about my position in all of this. I want people to understand the sort of people who have stood behind, and continue to stand behind, the notion that the press should be entirely financially seperate from the media they are covering. No undisclosed funding either to or from people involved in game creation, no undisclosed relationships, etc - the fact that this has to even be said when it's a basic assumption in the majority of journalism is, frankly, already an issue. Because we are people, and we all have stories.

My introduction to gaming was watching as my mother beat Sonic the Hedgehog 1 & 2. I can't remember much of it in honesty, but I remember seeing my mother happy at just losing herself in a game, pouring hours into something. My first experience of playing a video game was running through sonic 2 as tails while one of my sisters (the youngest of two) played andd beat the game as Sonic. I can remember being bitterly disappointed that I couldn't play past Metropolis Zone, but had fun watching her continue regardless. Just after this, we got our Windows 95. I can remember failing miserably at Commander Keen, and how awesome the idea that a square pushed into a port contained a massive game. I never actually got very far of course, but I was hooked.

Later on after joining school, there was a very kind girl who, having seen me be pushed to the ground for holding one of my best friend's hands on the playground and called a lesbian (by someone who was 4, even though I'm male) invited me back to her house. There, we played Sonic Spinball, Earthworm Jim and some other stuff. We became very good friends and that was my only contact with anyone else who I knew played video games. It stayed like that for a while, until I ran into another guy who actually played games - my first such encounter. Even by the time I was 7, I still knew far more girls who played games than boys. In fact, it's fair to say most of my upbringing around games was from women helping me find my feet playing them.

But this is where the story stops being happy. I'm sorry if the following paragraph seems incredibly formal, but I hope everyone reading understands that it helps me keep emotional distance and it's very challenging to write about. When I was 15, a girl at my friend's 16th party spiked my drinks with alcohol. I remember knowing that it was much stronger than what I'd asked for but at the same time, I'd never really drank any sizable amount of alcohol - the most I'd ever had was a glass of wine at christmas. Sometime between 3 and 4 hours in, I was in no fit shape to do much of anything. I could barely walk, barely see straight and was generally extremely drunk. What I do remember is that at some point after that, this girl took me away from the crowd, into a back room and put her hand down my trousers. I remember saying that I didn't want it, that I didn't like anything that was happening and that I just wanted to go and sit down, but nothing stopped her. I remember her pushing me to the floor and unzipping my jeans, lying on top of me, putting a condom on me while I wasn't even up. I... well, I guess the only thing I can really say after that is that it turns out that genital stimulation happens regardless of you saying to stop repeatedly, and that the reason I lost my virginity at 15 is not due to my own desire. Sorry that's so awkwardly worded, it's just... well, I hope you understand that this is still hard to write. Did I report it to the police? Of course not - I felt like, if I'd really not wanted it, I wouldn't have gotten erect, right? So it must have been my fault. 7 years of therapy later, a 5 year relationship ruined because I've tried to commit suicide three times and a heavy medication of anti-depressants later, I still get niggling doubts about it - it's very hard to not think it's your fault when you read almost daily that men simply can't be raped because erections imply consent. It doesn't end there - a few days later, that girl's boyfriend had heard that I "made advances on her" at the party, so he pushed me into a barbed wire fence and started hitting me whilst calling me "a pussy" and saying I "didn't deserve [the girl] anyway". Did I tell anyone? No, I told my parents that I'd fallen against the fence because I got dizzy on the wway home, and because she only kicked me in the chest, I had no bruises not hidden under clothes. Again, I didn't get anyone involved - I still thought it was my fault.

What I did do is reach out to feminism online. The people I talked to were very kind, and it felt like they really empathised with me. I felt like I belonged somewhere, and quickly tried to understand them as they had me. But, then, I was used not as a person but as a tool. I was no longer someone who was doing what they could to help others, but instead a flag of a ship held up to say "look at what we're doing". I was disgusted and outraged, because the people I'd grown to trust told me to vilify others and say things like "teach men to stop raping" - but my attacker wasn;t a man. I felt used, so stopped visiting those sites.

Then I found the MRA movement. Again, I felt welcomed and they understood that I felt scorned from the feminist side due to being politicised when all I needed was help and affection. I was shown support groups, help sites and given skype addresses to message if I felt suicidal again. But, as with everything which has seemed good in my life, they also treated me as a weapon - suddenly I was showing up the "feminists" who'd clearly rejected me because I was male. Again, that's not what had happened and again, I was upset to be a ball in some sick game of harassing other people. I disassociate myself from both groups now, because apparently neither can stop using people who're hurting as their shield and sword against ideological opponents.

Eventually, I just kept doing what I am now - losing myself in games as I did when I was 3. It's escapism at its best, but it's also just fun. I love seeing what I can do in modern games, it never ceases to amaze me. It's the furthest away from those experiences I've gotten. It's not my only hobby by any means, but it's my old faithful one which I rely on heavily.

Now imagine that you're me. Imagine that you are, daily, seeing articles from the press saying that you're a misogynist. Imagine that you're told that you're inherently sexualising women, and pushing them out of games. Imagine reading one day that it's wrong to demonise women for their sex lives, then the next be called a virgin, neckbeard, fedora wearing loser for the heineous crime of saying you;re a "gamer". Just think of what I see when I read all of these pieces about what apparently people are saying and doing in the name of a movement I'm a part of.

So you take the high road. You know, because of your abuse and just generally because you try to be kind, that you're not going to convince anyone by being cruel. You post why you want gaming journalism to be fair. You say that yes, of course people in the industry can make friendships, but they should be mentioned when articles are written by those journalists. You say that there needs to be accountability in the media because allegations of fraud are floating around. At the same time, you actively seek people being offensive to opposition and tell them to cut it out. You note as a matter of pride that you've barely had to do so, and actually the harassment seems to have become almost non-existant.

And then you're told to apologise for the harassers.
You're told you aren't doing enough.
You're told that, until all harassment is gone from your side, your message won't even be considered.

So you double down. You dedicate literally hours trying to find all these people tweeting harassment. You spend ages scrolling through forums and message boards trying to see this apparent plague of misogynists. But you can't - they're barely there, a pinch of salt in a thousand litres of water. Even so, you continue to call them out while also trying to make the people opposing you understand your issue.

And they ignore you, and they harass you, and they continue to tell you to stop the harassment from your side.

In the past fortnight, I've been told:
-I hate women
-I want to drive out women from gaming
-I want to enable harassers to drive out women
-I support the side of abusers
-I'm worse than the ISIS
-I'm sexist
-I'm racist
-I'm lying about my rape
-That my rape is insignificant because there's more male-on-female rape
-I'm part of "rape culture"
-I couldn't have even been raped, because I'm too physically strong now
-If I was attacked, it's something I did to deserve it
-I am enabling child pornography
-I am homophobic despite being bi
-I'm a "lying piece of shit man baby"
-I'm "a fucking slut shaming asshole"
-I'm "a literal turd"

What have I said to deserve this? I was called racist for saying we shouldn't be prejudiced against people based on their skin colour. I was called a misogynist for saying I call myself a gamer. I was called misogynistic for saying I supported my sister coming out as gay, because it must have been very hard to do so. What am I meant to do any more? Why do I need to keep saying sorry to these bigots? I know I am not any of the things I've been called. Where's my apology? Why do I even persist against such hatred? I've done absolutely nothing to these people, and I am demeaned regardless. I'm not the one monetising harassment of women. I'm not the one blaming others for vile acts like tweeting child porn. I'm not the one who refuses to disclose the absolute BASICS required in any other journalism. I'm not the one who wrote news reports on how some website with a suicide hotline in the header was apparently attacking a female game dev without even having any evidence. I'm not trying to pretend a website like 4chan with several hundred thousand users is somehow engaged in some elaborate plot run by 10 people in a public IRC, nor am I pretending that 4chan is some exclusive group instead of a board which literally anyone can post on anonymously in seconds. I'm certainly not trying to shut down anything other than corruption. And yet, I'm either a worthless, pathetic excuse for a human one day, or a kind soul being manipulated by people I don't know, have never met and don't care about who're subjecting me to their whims.

It's all crap. I refuse to apologise any more, because I've had 100 times the vitriol thrown at me personally than I've even SEEN levelled at the people I'm against. I am a human, with a basic goal and I'm sick of being used. I will no more say sorry for these, frankly, bullies in the media trying to cover each other's asses when they can't even treat me with basic respect. I am disgusted that I should even have to any more when no such apology has been raised from the people stood against. I refuse to yield until the people who're saying these vile things are fired, or otherwise forced to accept that they're in the wrong here. I am not making money from this, I am not going to allow one of my limited outlets of depression be taken over by a nepotistic media and I absolutely will not stand for having to cope with flashbacks of abuse every day whilst some fool says I should apologise more. If I behaved like these journalists in my own job, I'd have been out the door in an hour. The harassment must end - from both sides, yes - but I need it to stop from the people against me, because I cannot deal with these suicidal thoughts again. I cannot cope with reading these people seriously defame me for what is little more than an escapist hobby. I cannot deal with being "called out" for things I've not even done. This farce must end, and there must be a serious address to the issue raised without slinging mud.

And I expect that I'll be able to sleep well with the knowledge that I might not be insulted by the people representing me in the media when hell freezes over. I don't even know what I've got any more, nor what's left to say. I am a man who likes games. That's all I want to be. Please just give me that, without calling me some slur or hating me for one day.

 

[Jux]

Why would anyone set up a million+ view thread that started as public shaming? That was a rhetorical question.

And I'll give you a rhetorical answer (/Goku). The reason is, there kinda isn't one. For one, how do you get a million views on a thread that's about nothing but shaming a relatively obscure indie dev? I mean that seriously by the way. How do you get a million unique views on a thread when it's all about shaming someone. Surely you can't think 4chan is this lurking Lovecraftian horror with tentacles that reach so far into the internet that it can enslave the masses into doing its bidding. You can't be stupid enough to actually believe that, so it's gotta be something else. How on Earth could a public shaming be enough to create the single biggest thread in the history of the Escapist's forums?

I should have just left off the 'million views' part. That was misleading, and I didn't check myself there. Fact is though that plenty is to be gained by publicly shaming her if the original objective was to harass her.

Kinda? I said "Because she's a public figure who is both easy to harass and readily responds loudly and noisily to it. Welcome to the Internet. Anonymity leads to people being complete twats to others, especially when the target visibly reacts to it.", you responded with "It's impossible to prove either way". I cited evidence supporting my claim. It's not okay that anyone gets harassed ever, but Quinn isn't being harassed because she's a woman. She's being harassed because she's a public figure on the internet. As evidence, I give you every public figure who's ever been on the internet. Every single goddamn one gets harassed, regardless of if they're from gaming, politics, religion, sociology, etc. Whenever there's a large enough audience who can be anonymous, there's going to be some twats within that audience who get their jollies by harassing the public figures. It happens everywhere. It's the unfortunate cost of being on the internet.

I'm not saying it's good or acceptable that she's being harassed. I'm saying that she's not special because of it.

Saying 'she was harassed because she's a public figure' is simply misleading. She was harassed because she allegedly cheated on her boyfriend (how many guys get that level of online harassment for cheating?). There is a disproportional amount of harassment being leveled at women in the gaming industry, and one can't simply handwave it away as 'it's because she's a public figure'. This didn't start because 'of her views', it started based on something she allegedly did in her private life.

If you're looking for reputable sources, you can check out the Slate [http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/09/gamergate_explodes_gaming_journalists_declare_the_gamers_are_over_but_they.html] and Forbes [http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/04/gamergate-a-closer-look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/] articles about this whole kerfluffle for a pretty concise summary of what's going on with the whole affair. Both of them are pretty good, balanced looks into the whole affair.

Taking a look at them now.

That article you link sounds an awful lot like gamers getting together and telling Christian activist groups to fuck off and let them be inclusive. Really not seeing how that's gamers up in arms that there's gay characters in there.

You asked for an example of a game getting yelled at for including minorities. I provided evidence of that, despite the fact that not once did I claim that games were getting yelled at for including minorities, only that gamers pushing for inculsivity were being told to stfu 'because creative freedom'. (edit: this doesn't exactly constitute 'mass hate', but there have been plenty of posts I've seen on the Escapist saying that female soldiers shouldn't be included because people find it immersion breaking[footnote]http://steamcommunity.com/app/223830/discussions/0/35219681442390507/?insideModal=1[/footnote][footnote]http://www.reddit.com/r/arma/comments/1cg8mx/should_military_games_have_women_soldiers/[/footnote][footnote]http://www.reddit.com/r/arma/comments/1cg8mx/should_military_games_have_women_soldiers/[/footnote]Footnotes are results of a 2 minute google search.) If that doesn't meet your standard, I'm sorry, but you're asking me to provide evidence for something I never claimed in the first place, so I don't really know what you're expecting of me.

Also, this totally reminds me of a game that had a core mechanic cut out for the sake of inclusivity: Dragon Age II. They literally went through and completely threw out any sense of good writing and strong characterization specifically so that any Hawke could be any sexual orientation under the sun. It's impossible to prove they worsened the game for it, but it certainly made the characters and world seem substantially less real when literally everyone Hawke interacted with was bi-sexual and interested in him/her.

Kind of a red herring here, as your sense of 'good writing and characterization' does not qualify as a game mechanic.

http://badgeville.com/wiki/Game_Mechanics

Nah, I'm expecting to have heard about the internet hate machine targeting Activision or whatever for including female soldiers. I haven't heard a negative whisper about it.

Off the top of my head I can point you to some of the comments mentioned by the author of this article: http://www.sentralgamer.com/female-soldiers-spark-sexist-controversy-in-cod-ghosts/

One I mentioned in the last post. Seriously though, I'm not going to dig up every vitriolic or sexist comment made about this.

Two questions: 1) Why would you want to play a rape simulator?

For the funsies obviously.

2) That's kinda my point. A rape simulator sounds both disgusting and having probably incredibly shitty gameplay, because it's a game made to hammer home a point first and be a game second. There's certainly a market for that, but it's not the primary one. Most people plays games as entertainment, just as most people watch movies for entertainment. There's room to have artsy or agenda-driven games, but it's never going to dominate the market, and trying to force them to is just going to cause a repeat of the 1983 crash.

I'm pointing out that 'fun' is a hugely subjective standard. What many people consider fun I might find boring or abhorent, so when people say 'but they're making games less fun!' all I can do is scratch my head, because to me, they're making them more fun.

 

[Fappy]

-Snip-

Thank you for sharing this here.

I think it's safe to say that sweeping generalizations and labels create a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. If you believe I was generalizing the movement in my post, I am truly sorry. That was not my intention.

 

[Agayek]

I should have just left off the 'million views' part. That was misleading, and I didn't check myself there. Fact is though that plenty is to be gained by publicly shaming her if the original objective was to harass her.

Ok, let me rephrase then. Why would people continue to visit the thread if it was about nothing but shaming Quinn? What on Earth could possess more people than any other topic in Escapist history to post in and visit a thread about shaming a single indie developer?

You're saying it's all about Quinn, which suggests you think there's enough of an audience to create the largest thread ever on the Escapist purely to harass her. Is that the case? And if so, I've gotta ask: What the hell are you on and where can I get some?

Saying 'she was harassed because she's a public figure' is simply misleading. She was harassed because she allegedly cheated on her boyfriend (how many guys get that level of online harassment for cheating?). There is a disproportional amount of harassment being leveled at women in the gaming industry, and one can't simply handwave it away as 'it's because she's a public figure'. This didn't start because 'of her views', it started based on something she allegedly did in her private life.

"There is a disproportional amount of harassment being leveled at women in the gaming industry" [Citation Needed]

The only women I ever hear about getting harassed are Sarkeesian and Quinn, both of which are public figures who seemingly subsist on being harassed. I've never heard of Roberta Williams or Jennifer Dawe, for example, being harassed. In fact, by all reports, they get treated fairly well.

You asked for an example of a game getting yelled at for including minorities. I provided evidence of that, despite the fact that not once did I claim that games were getting yelled at for including minorities, only that gamers pushing for inculsivity were being told to stfu 'because creative freedom'. If that doesn't meet your standard, I'm sorry, but you're asking me to provide evidence for something I never claimed in the first place, so I don't really know what you're expecting of me.

I had assumed "What games have been yelled at for including a minority character?" implicitly included a "by gamers" tag, since that was, y'know, the topic of conversation.

Kind of a red herring here, as your sense of 'good writing and characterization' does not qualify as a game mechanic.

http://badgeville.com/wiki/Game_Mechanics

If you wanna be pedantic about it, sure.

Writing and characterization is still a powerful part of any game though, especially in games from Bioware, who built their reputation on delivering excellently written and interesting characters. Which they then proceeded to shit the bed with in the name of inclusivity.

Off the top of my head I can point you to some of the comments mentioned by the author of this article: http://www.sentralgamer.com/female-soldiers-spark-sexist-controversy-in-cod-ghosts/

One I mentioned in the last post. Seriously though, I'm not going to dig up every vitriolic or sexist comment made about this.

Like I said, I must have missed the hate-train for Ghosts. I accept that I was wrong about that and people did apparently kick up a fuss about it. Go figure.

I'm pointing out that 'fun' is a hugely subjective standard. What many people consider fun I might find boring or abhorent, so when people say 'but they're making games less fun!' all I can do is scratch my head, because to me, they're making them more fun.

Well yeah. Remember that car analogy I made a while back? That's the issue here. The big publishers establish a brand, reputation, and target audience, then in the name of ever-greater profit, they then start making the brand less fun for that target audience in order to make it more fun for you (meant in the broader sense here). This then makes the original target audience upset, because the game they enjoyed has now been rendered less fun for them.

What needs to happen is that you and the target audience are actually two separate markets who want two separate things, and instead of releasing one product that is kinda bland and forgettable to serve both markets, the publishers need to make games in their established brands for their target audience, and completely new games for the new markets (you). By insisting that every game must be made as fun as possible for all people, you actually diminish the amount of fun anyone gets out of it, and it leads to the bland, same-y "wider appeal" shit AAA games have become over the last few years.

Instead of pushing for make existing brands "more inclusive", you should be pushing for new, more inclusive games, that way both markets are satisfied, and the original market has no cause to be upset with the second.

 

[Agayek]

Honestly, Dragon Age 2 was full of bad writing. What parts were bad simply because of dem bisexuals? Maybe Hawke was actually bisexual and by censoring the word bisexual so they dont scare away straight people they lost a significant characterization of Hawke. Or maybe DA2 was a bad game.

but then again you're talking about optional romances as a "core game mechanic". I know that bioware loves its romances but shit I've seen a picture of the romance dialog scripts for DA:I and its like 4 pages and a paper clip, thats no core gameplay mechanic.

Dragon Age 2 was written horribly, I agree. My point was less about the actual romance however, and more in that literally everyone Hawke regularly interacted with but Vaeric and the married chick was both bisexual, sexually aggressive, and interested in Hawke, solely and explicitly because Bioware wanted players to be able to romance anyone no matter their Hawke. Tell me, what are the odds of all of Hawke's companions being both interested and bisexual? Purely statistically, the chances are miniscule, to the point where it's basically impossible. It greatly cheapened the immersion of the game world, and made the game worse than it otherwise would have been (which still isn't good by any stretch of the imagination).

 

[Agayek]

its a world with elves, dragons, demons and mages who bend blood, if your immersion is cheapened by characters who fall in love with people regardless of their pants mechanics then....well..thats kind of on you there.

I liken it to Skyrim's 'romance' of "I can bed anyone as long as they're wearing a necklace" justification; "The world's shit, we could all die tomorrow, who cares." Maybe the Dragon Age world didn't have centuries of strict religious interference telling people its bad to love people with matching pipe ends, mainly because they were too afraid a mage was going to get possessed by a demon and rain hell fire upon the land to control peoples love lives. Seems like a reasonable in-story justification for everyone being bisexual regardless of real life statistics.

I mean, the chance that I will be killed by a mage in real life is 0%, I'm willing to bet the chance is slightly higher in Kirkwall. Which totes kills my immersion.

Yeah, there's plenty of justifiable reasons for it, but it's still there. It's not that the characters are bi or not, it's the fact that it's a constant reminder to the player that they're in a game that's trying way too hard to cater to them. Just like how it's disconcerting and immersion-breaking when party members get killed in battle then stand up completely fine the second the last enemy topples over, or when you get giant alert messages popping up in the middle of the screen in Skyrim, or when you miss a stealth shot in Far Cry 3 and suddenly every enemy within 10 miles knows exactly what bush you're hiding in, or when cutscenes take over in Devil May Cry 3 and Dante does all this random impressive shit he can't ever do in gameplay, or when giant glowing buttons appear on screen for quick-time events, etc, etc, etc. I could go on all day about this.

The point isn't whether or not they're gay or bi or whatever. The point is that every single companion NPC actively propositions Hawke, and it's a blatant and glaring reminder to the player that yes, they are playing a game. It makes the world feel fake in a way that the blatantly impossible shit doesn't. Suspension of disbelief works wonders for allowing an audience to accept impossibilities. It's much harder to make them accept things that are supposed to reflect reality (ie: characters and characterization).

 

[Jux]

I should have just left off the 'million views' part. That was misleading, and I didn't check myself there. Fact is though that plenty is to be gained by publicly shaming her if the original objective was to harass her.

Ok, let me rephrase then. Why would people continue to visit the thread if it was about nothing but shaming Quinn? What on Earth could possess more people than any other topic in Escapist history to post a visit a thread about shaming a single indie developer?

You're saying it's all about Quinn, which suggests you think there's enough of an audience to create the largest thread ever on the Escapist purely to harass her. Is that the case? And if so, I've gotta ask: What the hell are you on and where can I get some?

I would say the fact that the Escapist is pretty much the only place allowing the discussion to take place is reason enough for the huge influx of people talking about it. That being said, I agree conceded earlier that there are likely people swept up in this that are primarily interested in the ethics aspect of this whole debacle, but this thing started as harassment, and you'd can't just whitewash that history.

"There is a disproportional amount of harassment being leveled at women in the gaming industry" [Citation Needed]

Gladly.

http://blog.pricecharting.com/2012/09/emilyami-sexism-in-video-games-study.html

Spoiler

Women were four times more likely than men to have experienced taunting or harassment, with 63.3% of all female participants responding that they had. The stories that these women told me regarding their experiences are similar to what one might think of regarding this topic. ?****,? ?*****,? ?slut,? and ?whore? were common slurs. The threats were largely of sexual assault. Much of the harassment was based around asking for or demanding sexual favors or comments that revolved around the traditional gender role and stereotyped behavior for women in Western society. Many of the insults were based on the subject's weight or physical appearance.


15.7% of men also reported that they had experienced sex-based taunting, harassment, or threats while playing video games. While this is in the minority, it is still of concern as sexism. The comments directed at these gamers, however, are different from those directed at women in some very telling ways. Most of the men who provided additional information on their ?yes? response to this question experienced comments that revolved around them not fitting a masculine gender role. These men were often called ?fags? and compared to or told that they were women and labeled with stereotypically feminine words.

And online harassment in general:

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/08/260757625/internet-harassment-of-women-when-haters-do-more-than-just-hate

Spoiler

HESS: Sure. Well, there hasn't been a huge body of research on this issue, but there have been a few organizations and legal scholars who are beginning to dig into it who have been able to sort of isolate some statistics that show that women are disproportionately affected by online threats and harassment. The Pew Research Center is...
MARTIN: Well, you cite some of that in your piece, for example, in 2006, researchers from the University of Maryland set up a bunch of fake online accounts and then sent them into chat rooms. And you said that accounts with female usernames or feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day and the masculine names received 3.7. And that you said that there was another study by the Pew Research Center, which has been tracking the online lives of Americans for more than a decade, that women and men have been logging on in equal numbers since the year 2000, but that the kinds of communications we're talking about are disproportionally lobbed at women. Any idea why?
HESS: Well, I think when you have any group that is traditionally marginalized in life, you're going to see a similar marginalization online because the Internet is really intimately connected to our real lives. So when we talk about women being oversensitive, that's also a complaint that's been applied to women who pursue sexual harassment litigation against their employers.

The only women I ever hear about getting harassed are Sarkeesian and Quinn, both of which are public figures who seemingly subsist on being harassed. I've never heard of Roberta Williams or Jennifer Dawe, for example, being harassed. In fact, by all reports, they get treated fairly well.

Jenn Frank? Mattie Brice? This? http://www.businessinsider.com/women-programmers-stories-of-harassment-2013-3 Or this? http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/22/5926193/women-gaming-harassment Or this? http://kotaku.com/she-was-harassed-by-a-games-reporter-now-shes-speakin-1510714971 How many more do I need to find?

I had assumed "What games have been yelled at for including a minority character?" implicitly included a "by gamers" tag, since that was, y'know, the topic of conversation.

Again, going to point out not once did I claim that games were getting yelled at for including minorities, only that gamers pushing for inculsivity were being told to stfu 'because creative freedom'.

If you wanna be pedantic about it, sure.

Let's say what we mean then. If you say 'game mechanics' I am going to think 'game mechanics' not 'writing'.

Writing and characterization is still a powerful part of any game though, especially in games from Bioware, who built their reputation on delivering excellently written and interesting characters. Which they then proceeded to shit the bed with in the name of inclusivity.

As it was already pointed out, the writing was terrible all around. Let me ask you this though. Could the writing have been better without sacrificing inclusivity?

 

[Agayek]

I would say the fact that the Escapist is pretty much the only place allowing the discussion to take place is reason enough for the huge influx of people talking about it. That being said, I agree conceded earlier that there are likely people swept up in this that are primarily interested in the ethics aspect of this whole debacle, but this thing started as harassment, and you'd can't just whitewash that history.

Sure, the whole debacle started because Quinn's ex aired her dirty laundry. That doesn't invalidate anything that was uncovered afterwards or the press' general reaction to it however, and that's what's still on-going.

Gladly.

http://blog.pricecharting.com/2012/09/emilyami-sexism-in-video-games-study.html

Spoiler

Women were four times more likely than men to have experienced taunting or harassment, with 63.3% of all female participants responding that they had. The stories that these women told me regarding their experiences are similar to what one might think of regarding this topic. ?****,? ?*****,? ?slut,? and ?whore? were common slurs. The threats were largely of sexual assault. Much of the harassment was based around asking for or demanding sexual favors or comments that revolved around the traditional gender role and stereotyped behavior for women in Western society. Many of the insults were based on the subject's weight or physical appearance.


15.7% of men also reported that they had experienced sex-based taunting, harassment, or threats while playing video games. While this is in the minority, it is still of concern as sexism. The comments directed at these gamers, however, are different from those directed at women in some very telling ways. Most of the men who provided additional information on their ?yes? response to this question experienced comments that revolved around them not fitting a masculine gender role. These men were often called ?fags? and compared to or told that they were women and labeled with stereotypically feminine words.

And online harassment in general:

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/08/260757625/internet-harassment-of-women-when-haters-do-more-than-just-hate

Spoiler

HESS: Sure. Well, there hasn't been a huge body of research on this issue, but there have been a few organizations and legal scholars who are beginning to dig into it who have been able to sort of isolate some statistics that show that women are disproportionately affected by online threats and harassment. The Pew Research Center is...
MARTIN: Well, you cite some of that in your piece, for example, in 2006, researchers from the University of Maryland set up a bunch of fake online accounts and then sent them into chat rooms. And you said that accounts with female usernames or feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day and the masculine names received 3.7. And that you said that there was another study by the Pew Research Center, which has been tracking the online lives of Americans for more than a decade, that women and men have been logging on in equal numbers since the year 2000, but that the kinds of communications we're talking about are disproportionally lobbed at women. Any idea why?
HESS: Well, I think when you have any group that is traditionally marginalized in life, you're going to see a similar marginalization online because the Internet is really intimately connected to our real lives. So when we talk about women being oversensitive, that's also a complaint that's been applied to women who pursue sexual harassment litigation against their employers.

Jenn Frank? Mattie Brice? This? http://www.businessinsider.com/women-programmers-stories-of-harassment-2013-3 Or this? http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/22/5926193/women-gaming-harassment Or this? http://kotaku.com/she-was-harassed-by-a-games-reporter-now-shes-speakin-1510714971 How many more do I need to find?

None really, you can't argue against sources. The only thing I'd contest there are the polygon and kotaku articles and Jenn Frank. Frank was harassed for the same reason Devin Faraci is getting shit on Twitter, she hopped on the 'gamers are dead' bandwagon, and Kotaku and Polygon's trustworthiness has been rather severely undermined by recent events.

The rest I can't disagree with however, and I tip my hat to you. Women do appear to receive more anonymous abuse over the internet.

Again, going to point out not once did I claim that games were getting yelled at for including minorities, only that gamers pushing for inculsivity were being told to stfu 'because creative freedom'.

I refer you to my previously mentioned statements regarding "less fun for everyone".

Let's say what we mean then. If you say 'game mechanics' I am going to think 'game mechanics' not 'writing'.

The writing is a core mechanic of any narrative-driven game. Like I said, if you really want to be pedantic, then sure, the writing isn't a game mechanic, but it is a central and important aspect of narrative-focused games, and that was my point.

As it was already pointed out, the writing was terrible all around. Let me ask you this though. Could the writing have been better without sacrificing inclusivity?

Yes. The characters and the game world would have been stronger and better had each companion character had a more solid characterization and the game wasn't incessantly shouting "DO YOU WANT TO FUCK THEM?! ARE YOU SURE?! HOW ABOUT NOW?!" at the player.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

#GamerGate needs about as much damage control as the other side then. Cause they have done the same shit.
Anti-Gamer Gate people have the same extremists, they've harassed men, women, and children.


Extremists are bad all around, but I don't find myself sympathizing with the side that advocates a mass blocklist and then SUDDENLY realizes that a blocklist might not be a good idea after seeing the flack Polygon got for it.

The people who think 'sjws' are a thing.

Are you a person who thinks "gamers" are a thing?

 

[Jux]

I would say the fact that the Escapist is pretty much the only place allowing the discussion to take place is reason enough for the huge influx of people talking about it. That being said, I agree conceded earlier that there are likely people swept up in this that are primarily interested in the ethics aspect of this whole debacle, but this thing started as harassment, and you'd can't just whitewash that history.

Sure, the whole debacle started because Quinn's ex aired her dirty laundry. That doesn't invalidate anything that was uncovered afterwards or the press' general reaction to it however, and that's what's still on-going.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/09/09/gamergate-reveals-silencing-women/

This is a pretty good articulation of how I feel about the whole gamergate thing. It seems I'm doing a poor job of making my points clear, as this has gone on now for longer than I feel is really necessary.

Yes. The characters and the game world would have been stronger and better had each companion character had a more solid characterization and the game wasn't incessantly shouting "DO YOU WANT TO FUCK THEM?! ARE YOU SURE?! HOW ABOUT NOW?!" at the player.

I snipped a good bit because I feel I'm getting off track here. If you feel I'm ignoring points you want me to answer for, let me know and I'll go back and address it.

For this last bit though, if you agree that the writing could have been better without reducing inclusivity, then how does it stand that inclusivity was the cause of the problems with DA2 re:

Also, this totally reminds me of a game that had a core mechanic cut out for the sake of inclusivity: Dragon Age II. They literally went through and completely threw out any sense of good writing and strong characterization specifically so that any Hawke could be any sexual orientation under the sun. It's impossible to prove they worsened the game for it, but it certainly made the characters and world seem substantially less real when literally everyone Hawke interacted with was bi-sexual and interested in him/her.

It seems to me, like you said, the writers got caught up with trying to push everyone romantically on Hawke. Were the writing better, they could have allowed for all the same romance options, but not been so heavy handed about it.

 

[Agayek]

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/09/09/gamergate-reveals-silencing-women/

This is a pretty good articulation of how I feel about the whole gamergate thing. It seems I'm doing a poor job of making my points clear, as this has gone on now for longer than I feel is really necessary.

That article starts off with several factual inaccuracies that make it hard to take seriously. In the second paragraph, it says Sarkeesian fled her home days before Quinn was doxxed or her porn pics spread around, when it was the other way around, and it also claims that Gjoni ever claimed Quinn slept with Grayson for coverage, when his initial blog post about it explicitly says "If there was a conflict of interest with Grayson's work, I don't believe it was sexual in nature". That makes it really, really hard to take that article seriously.

Then it kinda goes into a segue about 4chan masterminding the whole thing because reasons, despite the fact that 4chan is all entirely public and has never been terribly shy about claiming responsibility for anything they've done. Hell, they try to claim shit they haven't done. There's no proof or evidence of any kind of conspiracy to harass Quinn, just snippets of a public IRC chat that's always caustic and vulgar to everything. I'm really not seeing it.

This really reads like someone who heard it about from a friend, who was probably against #GamerGate from the beginning, and hasn't the slightest idea how 4chan works or what the board culture is actually like. It's understandable, but grossly misrepresentational and one-sided.

And yeah, this has gone on for a while, but I like to debate these topics. I love people disagreeing with me because it means I get exposed to new ideas and can use it to further refine my own. If you're sick of talking about it though, just say the word /shrug

I snipped a good bit because I feel I'm getting off track here. If you feel I'm ignoring points you want me to answer for, let me know and I'll go back and address it.

For this last bit though, if you agree that the writing could have been better without reducing inclusivity, then how does it stand that inclusivity was the cause of the problems with DA2 re:

It seems to me, like you said, the writers got caught up with trying to push everyone romantically on Hawke. Were the writing better, they could have allowed for all the same romance options, but not been so heavy handed about it.

Oh absolutely. They absolutely could have taken more time and done it right and it would have been just fine, same with roughly 85% of the rest of the game (no amount of time would have fixed the encounter design /shudder). They didn't though, which is my point. They forced the inclusivity in there for no reason but to be inclusive, and it was to the games detriment.

I've got no issue with games being more inclusive on the whole. I'd happily play as a black gay jewish female quadruple amputee or whatever, all that matters is the game being interesting and fun. More diversity means more differing experiences, which means more interesting games, which is always good.

What I'm against is forcing games to be inclusive for the sake of being inclusive. It is always harmful to force one's views and opinions on others, regardless of intention or context. Individual liberty is the highest ethical, moral, societal, and cultural value, and forcing an artist, art collective, or even for-profit company to adhere to an arbitrary standard they chose not to adhere to is not acceptable. If you want to present an argument why they should, by all means, go ahead, but no one or thing should ever be browbeaten or threatened into compliance. If, as a result, you don't like the game because it's not inclusive enough, you should push for games that are up to your standards. The free market will take care of the rest.

 

[Jux]

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/09/09/gamergate-reveals-silencing-women/

This is a pretty good articulation of how I feel about the whole gamergate thing. It seems I'm doing a poor job of making my points clear, as this has gone on now for longer than I feel is really necessary.

That article starts off with several factual inaccuracies that make it hard to take seriously. In the second paragraph, it says Sarkeesian fled her home days before Quinn was doxxed or her porn pics spread around, when it was the other way around, and it also claims that Gjoni ever claimed Quinn slept with Grayson for coverage, when his initial blog post about it explicitly says "If there was a conflict of interest with Grayson's work, I don't believe it was sexual in nature". That makes it really, really hard to take that article seriously.

Then it kinda goes into a segue about 4chan masterminding the whole thing because reasons, despite the fact that 4chan is all entirely public and has never been terribly shy about claiming responsibility for anything they've done. Hell, they try to claim shit they haven't done. There's no proof or evidence of any kind of conspiracy to harass Quinn, just snippets of a public IRC chat that's always caustic and vulgar to everything. I'm really not seeing it.

So because there is a minor timeline inaccuracy, which impacts nothing, and a misquote to Gjoni makes the entire piece not worth considering? As far as 4chan goes, it's already established all this started there. We can quibble about whether to call them 'masterminds', but you can't really dispute it all started there, it's plain to see in the IRC log. And there is plenty of proof, again, right there in the log, that they planned to harass Quinn.

Spoiler

Aug 21 23.20.35 there should be a massive campaign to tweet zoe her own nudes

Aug 18 20.10.06 i couldnt care less about vidya, i just want to see zoe receive her comeuppance

Aug 21 17.48.06 I'm debating whether or not we should just attack zoe
...
Aug 21 17.48.29 push her... push her further..... further, until eventually she an heroes

Aug 21 17.49.48 ./v should be in charge of the gaming journalism aspect of it. /pol should be in charge of the feminism aspect, and /b should be in charge of harassing her into killing herself

This really reads like someone who heard it about from a friend, who was probably against #GamerGate from the beginning, and hasn't the slightest idea how 4chan works or what the board culture is actually like. It's understandable, but grossly misrepresentational and one-sided.

And this sounds like unfounded speculation. It looks like you're nitpicking on the minor inconsistencies and semantics ('mastermind') while ignoring the overall point the article is driving home.

Oh absolutely. They absolutely could have taken more time and done it right and it would have been just fine, same with roughly 85% of the rest of the game (no amount of time would have fixed the encounter design /shudder). They didn't though, which is my point. They forced the inclusivity in there for no reason but to be inclusive, and it was to the games detriment.

Here's where I think you are wrong. It wasn't inclusivity that was to the games detriment. It was the poor writing. The two are not one in the same. And you've already agreed with me on that point.

What I'm against is forcing games to be inclusive for the sake of being inclusive. It is always harmful to force one's views and opinions on others, regardless of intention or context. Individual liberty is the highest ethical, moral, societal, and cultural value, and forcing an artist, art collective, or even for-profit company to adhere to an arbitrary standard they chose not to adhere to is not acceptable. If you want to present an argument why they should, by all means, go ahead, but no one or thing should ever be browbeaten or threatened into compliance. If, as a result, you don't like the game because it's not inclusive enough, you should push for games that are up to your standards. The free market will take care of the rest.

Who is forcing games to be inclusive? How are they forcing it? By threatening to not buy the game? Sorry to tell ya bud, but that's just free market at work. If a potential consumer doesn't like the product, they have every right to say why they don't like it, and why they won't be buying it. That isn't forcing anything on anyone, anymore than the gamergate goons are 'forcing' sponsors to drop the websites they have taken issue with (that is, sponsors aren't being forced to do anything).

Further, it isn't always harmful to force ones views or opinions on others. That's basically what parenting amounts to. Hell, you could even argue that the social contract amounts to it.

 

[CymbaIine]

Sure, the whole debacle started because Quinn's ex aired her dirty laundry. That doesn't invalidate anything that was uncovered afterwards or the press' general reaction to it however, and that's what's still on-going.

It does though, it wrecks credibility. I have repeatedly asked what the problem with Silverstring media is and the replies I get are free from proof, so I ask for proof and I get something that's open to interpretation. When I am being asked to believe somebodies interpretation of something I have to be able to trust them.