#GamerGate Needs Damage Control Badly (Small OP Update)

[Agayek]

So because there is a minor timeline inaccuracy, which impacts nothing, and a misquote oto 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

Not at all. I'm not discounting it because of minor factual inaccuracies. I'm only saying that it's indicative of a lack of research into the topic, and that makes it harder to take it seriously when they go tin foil hat claiming 4chan runs the internet. I read it, and it largely says "people in a public IRC said to harass Quinn ergo everything else is invalid, regardless of the rampant abuse and doxxing from anti-gamergate folks [http://gamergateharrassment.tumblr.com/], the shutdown of The Fine Young Capitalists' charity drive/contest thing, its subsequent media black out, and its resurrection [http://apgnation.com/archives/2014/09/09/6977/truth-gaming-interview-fine-young-capitalists], the very real conflicts of interest in the games media (see: Hernandez, Patricia), the massive campaign of censorship, websites demeaning their audience, and the IGF/Indiecade/Indie Fund racketeering allegations (which have gone on to the FBI) that the press is refusing to report on."

That's why I discounted it. It's a monologue about how gamers hate women because that big meany 4chan told them to, and it's frankly insulting in how grossly it's ignored inconvenient facts.

Kain failed to understand the core of it as well in the Forbes article I linked you earlier, but at least he put in the effort to know what actually happened, so I can respect his stance on it.

Also, just to make this perfectly clear: that is a public IRC where literally anyone can post anything and claim to be anyone. This means there's a preponderance of trolls, and/or people who legitimately want to harass Quinn, which those quotes came from. Some of it is possibly even Quinn herself saying it (though I highly doubt it, if only because I doubt she'd need to). Saying that that's proof of a conspiracy to harass Quinn is kinda like saying bathroom stall graffiti about wanting to kill Obama means everyone who ever used that toilet is going to try to assassinate the President. That's a completely fucking ludicrous notion, which is why I'm so baffled by the insistence that 4chan is manipulating the internet.

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.

The article's point is that big meany 4chan came running out and manufactured piles of evidence, some of which is going to federal fucking court, and that anyone who looks at it and thinks there might be something there is too stupid to tell when they're being duped.

Which is kinda pathetic given that, with all the minor factual inaccuracies, the author apparently doesn't even know what the evidence says in the first place.

Can you at least provide a factually accurate source for denying there's more to #GamerGate than harassing Quinn?

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.

Except forcing in the inclusivity when it didn't need to be there was explicitly what led to the shoddy writing in the first place. For whatever reason, Bioware decided that Hawke could romance anyone and everyone, no matter what, and so they got out the shoehorn and mutilated previously established characters to force it to happen, and then started going "look at us. We're inclusive. We don't discriminate. WE'RE DIVERSE. FUCK THESE PEOPLE ALREADY!". They shoehorned in inclusivity and diversity for the sake of having it, and it was greatly to the game's detriment.

If they'd gone in from the beginning and incorporated those concepts from the beginning, instead of shoehorning it in at the last minute for the sake of PR, it could have been done quite well and I probably would have enjoyed it. They didn't though, and the game was noticeably worse as a direct result of said shoehorning.

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).

I hate to break it to you, but that's really not the case [http://orogion.deviantart.com/journal/Save-the-Boob-plate-380891149]. Games are actively being censored and browbeaten into compliance, against the involved artists' express wishes, by people pushing for 'progressiveness' and 'inclusivity'. That's the shit that really rustles my jimmies. There are artists with specific visions for their work self-censoring, if not outright being censored, by mobs of activists rallying against anything they see as against their ideology, and it's several flavors of disgusting.

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.

No. Parenting, good parenting anyway, gives children examples, both good and bad, and teaches them to make up their own mind, on everything. It is always, always, always harmful to force one's views on another. It is never right to take choice away from another, just as it is never right for them to take choice away from you. People must always be allowed to make their own decisions, even if we believe they have chosen wrong. We can try to persuade them not to, but we lose all moral and ethical standing should we try to choose for them.

In other words, the only choice that is truly unacceptable is a choice that removes choice from another. Period.

 

[Agayek]

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.

The problem with Silverstring is, basicaly, that they have connections to a lot of the people in the industry who have come up as shady recently, and given the manifesto of the organization and how the industry has changed over the last few years, some people have given them the crown of mastermind behind the whole anti-gamer push, which wasn't helped any when somebody unearthed that article by Samantha Allen (an employee or consultant of theirs, I can't remember off hand which) cataloging basically everything that's going on in the game industry right now and naming the sites that are the worst offenders.

Personally, I think Silverstring is probably involved, but I've no idea on how deeply. The best look at Silverstring that I've seen is the video camera lady put together, which ties it to a lot of things via Patreon financial links and a few key players on their pay roll. She unfortunately set both of her videos (one of which is about the alleged racketeering on the part of the Indie Fund and Kellee Santiago in particular) on the recent kerfluffle to private earlier today or last night for some reason I never found out. You can find a download of the video talking about Silverstring here [http://hdming.wapka.me/site_download_video.xhtml?get-q=Indiefensible+The+Maya+Legobutts+Kramer+Story+v2&get-id=TgW5NRUfs44] if you want to get the basic gist of where the Silverstring stuff comes from.

 

[CymbaIine]

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.

The problem with Silverstring thing is, basicaly, that they have connections to a lot of the people in the industry who have come up as shady recently, and given the manifesto of the organization and how the industry has changed over the last few years, some people have given them the crown of mastermind behind the whole anti-gamer push, which wasn't helped any when somebody unearthed that article by Samantha Allen (an employee or consultant of theirs, I can't remember off hand which) cataloging basically everything that's going on in the game industry right now and naming the sites that are the worst offenders.

Personally, I think Silverstring is probably involved, but I've no idea on how deeply. The best look at Silverstring that I've seen is the video camera lady put together, which ties it to a lot of things via Patreon financial links and a few key players on their pay roll. She unfortunately set both of her videos (one of which is about the alleged racketeering on the part of the Indie Fund and Kellee Santiago in particular) on the recent kerfluffle to private earlier today or last night for some reason I never found out. You can find a download of the video talking about Silverstring here [http://hdming.wapka.me/site_download_video.xhtml?get-q=Indiefensible+The+Maya+Legobutts+Kramer+Story+v2&get-id=TgW5NRUfs44] if you want to get the basic gist of where the Silverstring stuff comes from.

Yeah but again you are asking me to believe the interpretation of people I am not inclined to believe.

Put aside the gamergate and Silverstring context. If the people that shared those naked pictures of Jenifer Lawrence then started uncovering corruption in the Hunger Games franchise I wouldn't be inclined to listen to them. Credibility is important especially for a movement that does have it's fair share of very vocal assholes.

 

[Buckets]

I have played/collected games since the dawn of computers and couldn't give 2 shits what some journo-hack decides is a gamer or not. Why get so riled up about something that is simply an opinion of some idiot, it wont change a single thing about my 'gaming' life. I still play and enjoy video games and probably always will, unless arthritis makes controllers too much to handle.

 

[Agayek]

Yeah but again you are asking me to believe the interpretation of people I am not inclined to believe.

Put aside the gamergate and Silverstring context. If the people that shared those naked pictures of Jenifer Lawrence then started uncovering corruption in the Hunger Games franchise I wouldn't be inclined to listen to them. Credibility is important especially for a movement that does have it's fair share of very vocal assholes.

I'm not asking you to believe anything. I gave you a link to a source that has most, if not all, of the information currently known about Silverstring. You can watch it, examine the evidence provided, weigh the conclusions the video creator reached from that evidence, and then make up your own mind. I don't presume to tell you what to think or who to trust. I'm asking you to look at the facts and make up your own mind. If you come to a different conclusion than I do, that's your prerogative, and as long as you remain civil with it, I'd be glad to debate it with you, or just wish you a happy rest of your life.

As for your hypothetical: If those people were able to provide compelling evidence to support their claims, you'd be foolish to dismiss it entirely. Reality is what it is. It does not change to suit our tastes or as is convenient. A great evil can be the source of enormous good in the world (for example, Unit 731 and the medical advances that came directly from the horrifying research performed there), just as a great good can produce a terrible evil (for example, the Marxist Revolution and Stalin's rise to power). It is important to note the source, but one should never dismiss evidence without examination. It is the height of intellectual cowardice.

 

[Agayek]

I have played/collected games since the dawn of computers and couldn't give 2 shits what some journo-hack decides is a gamer or not. Why get so riled up about something that is simply an opinion of some idiot, it wont change a single thing about my 'gaming' life. I still play and enjoy video games and probably always will, unless arthritis makes controllers too much to handle.

Cuz these same people champion a cause that says "games shouldn't be about 'fun' anymore", mostly. That's the part of that that bothered me. They flat out said, "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)."

I dunno about you, but I don't wanna live in a world where my games aren't fun.

 

[CymbaIine]

I'm not asking you to believe anything. I gave you a link to a source that has most of, if not all, of the information currently known about Silverstring. You can watch it, examine the evidence provided, weigh the conclusions the video creator reached from that evidence, and then make up your own mind. I don't presume to tell you what to think or who to trust. I'm asking you to look at the facts and make up your own mind. If you come to a different conclusion than I do, that's your prerogative, and as long as you remain civil with it, I'd be glad to debate it with you, or just wish you a happy rest of your life.

Putting aside the semantics of if that constitutes asking me to believe it I can only refer you to my original post.

You are asking me to look at evidence acquired and presented by people that I have reason to distrust. The sort of people who when they read personal information about a woman on the internet leaked by her angry ex decide to pick apart her life. It's history 101, when looking at evidence the first thing you do is look at the motivation of the people presenting it.

Furthermore you are asking me to look at it in the first place. You are asking me to take time out of my life to watch that horribly edited video (honestly you need better sources of info than youtube vids) why would I be inclined to do that given what I know of the source? It's similar to conspiracy theorists when they are challenged, maybe they do have proof that the government secretly knows about an asteroid and is withholding that information and maybe it's all in that vid they are linking but I am not going to bother to watch it because they have no credibility.

I get that you are going to respond with "Well don't then!!!" but my point is that when people dismiss gamergate as misogyny/whining/drama for the sake of drama they are doing so often for those reasons. Look at the gamergate thread compared to this one. Most people who have a problem with gamergate narrative vent and move on (and I imagine even more don't bother to even vent), they don't have the inclination to look at your evidence because why would they?

I just think if you want people to engage with this you need to stop dismissing those concerns by saying "yeah well that's true but look at what happened after".

 

[Jux]

Not at all. I'm not discounting it because of minor factual inaccuracies. I'm only saying that it's indicative of a lack of research into the topic, and that makes it harder to take it seriously when they go tin foil hat claiming 4chan runs the internet. I read it, and it largely says "people in a public IRC said to harass Quinn ergo everything else is invalid, regardless of the rampant abuse and doxxing from anti-gamergate folks [http://gamergateharrassment.tumblr.com/], the very real conflicts of interest in the games media (see: Hernandez, Patricia), the massive campaign of censorship, websites demeaning their audience, and the IGF/Indiecade/Indie Fund racketeering allegations (which have gone on to the FBI) that the press is refusing to report on."

That's why I discounted it. It's a monologue about gamers hate women because that big meany 4chan told them to, and it's frankly insulting in how grossly it's ignored inconvenient facts.

Kain failed to understand the core of it as well in the Forbes article I linked you earlier, but at least he put in the effort to know what actually happened, so I can respect his stance on it.

Also, just to make this perfectly clear: that is a public IRC where literally anyone can post anything and claim to be anyone. This means there's a preponderance of trolls, and/or people who legitimately want to harass Quinn, which those quotes came from. Some of it is possibly even Quinn herself saying it (though I highly doubt it, if only because I doubt she'd need to). Saying that that's proof of a conspiracy to harass Quinn is kinda like saying bathroom stall graffiti about wanting to kill Obama means everyone who ever used that toilet is going to try to assassinate the President. That's a completely fucking ludicrous notion, which is why I'm so baffled by the insistence that 4chan is manipulating the internet.

Regardless of what she's leaving out about other stuff uncovered during the process, I feel she hit the nail on the head about both 4chans role in starting and perpetuating this thing, and the general attitude expressed towards women. You say you're baffled at the insistence that 4chan is manipulating anyone, except they have a history of doing just that. Endfathersday, bikini bridge, free bleeding? I'm baffled by the idea that people don't think 4chan could do something like this.

The article's point is that big meany 4chan came running out and manufactured piles of evidence, some of which is going to federal fucking court, and that anyone who looks at it and thinks there might be something there is too stupid to tell when they're being duped.

Which is kinda pathetic given that, with all the minor factual inaccuracies, the author apparently doesn't even know what the evidence says in the first place.

Can you at least provide a factually accurate source for denying there's more to #GamerGate than harassing Quinn?

I linked the article in the first place because I thought it would articulate better how I personally felt. I don't need an article to justify my personal opinions on gamergate. You may not like my opinion, and you may disagree with em, but you haven't risen to actually showing that what I'm claiming is wrong.

Except forcing in the inclusivity when it didn't need to be there was explicitly what led to the shoddy writing in the first place.

Can you prove that?

For whatever reason, Bioware decided that Hawke could romance anyone and everyone, no matter what, and so they got out the shoehorn and mutilated previously established characters to force it to happen, and then started going "look at us. We're inclusive. We don't discriminate. WE'RE DIVERSE. FUCK THESE PEOPLE ALREADY!". They shoehorned in inclusivity and diversity for the sake of having it, and it was greatly to the game's detriment.

It may have been shoehorned in, but that wasn't what was detrimental to the game. It was that they did it without taking the time to give the game good writing.

If they'd gone in from the beginning and incorporated those concepts from the beginning, instead of shoehorning it in at the last minute for the sake of PR, it could have been done quite well and I probably would have enjoyed it. They didn't though, and the game was noticeably worse as a direct result of said shoehorning.

So, again, it wasn't that they added inclusivity, it was that they didn't provide good writing.

I hate to break it to you, but that's really not the case [http://orogion.deviantart.com/journal/Save-the-Boob-plate-380891149]. Games are actively being censored and browbeaten into compliance, against the involved artists' express wishes, by people pushing for 'progressiveness' and 'inclusivity'. That's the shit that really rustles my jimmies. There are artists with specific visions for their work self-censoring, if not outright being censored, by mobs of activists rallying against anything they see as against their ideology, and it's several flavors of disgusting.

No, they aren't. People pushing for diversity/progessiveness/inclusivity have zero control over artists or devs. Devs may -decide- that changing something about the game is preferable to getting bad press, but again, no one is being forced. 'Save the boob plate' sounds like a whiney tirade about how unfair it is that consumers are telling him they don't like his designs, and instead of trying to understand the criticism, he doubles down on the 'Don't change teh arts!, all while displaying a complete lack of awareness (comparing Nariko to Kratos? Dude doesn't even understand the concept of the male power fantasy apparently if he's going to draw that kind of false comparison)

No. Parenting, good parenting anyway, gives children examples, both good and bad, and teaches them to make up their own mind, on everything. It is always, always, always harmful to force one's views on another. It is never right to take choice away from another, just as it is never right for them to take choice away from you. People must always be allowed to make their own decisions, even if we believe they have chosen wrong. We can try to persuade them not to, but we lose all moral and ethical standing should we try to choose for them.

In other words, the only choice that is truly unacceptable is a choice that removes choice from another. Period.

Sorry, but no. There may be a certain point in parenting where it's preferable to teach kids to make up their own mind, such as after they've started to aquire critical thinking skills, but you don't reason with small children. Their minds simply don't work that way. You want your kid to learn empathy? Teach them to share.

Social contract boils down to the same thing. I may as well complain that people are forcing their views on me because it's illegal to murder, and I really really really want to get to murderin.

edit: This'll be my last post tonight, I need to get to sleep.

 

[Agayek]

I just think if you want people to engage with this you need to stop dismissing those concerns by saying "yeah well that's true but look at what happened after".

I'm not really sure what more you want. You asked for evidence, I gave you a source, one of the few on this particular topic, and you reject it out of hand. If you're not willing to look at the evidence provided, why ask for it in the first place?

And I'd like to think I've been pretty good about not dismissing the concerns. The whole did come out of what was basically a sex scandal. Gjoni posted what basically amounts of a journal of being abused and said "Don't trust this woman" and, the internet being what it is, it was blown way out of proportion. Quinn and her sexlife were dragged into the public space, and while the way she abused her boyfriend probably did deserve to be out there, there really shouldn't have been the reaction that there was. It's sordid and stupid and probably shouldn't have happened, but it did, and as a consequence, a lot of highly unpleasant things came to light.

These unpleasant things need to be addressed, which is why gamergate is still going three weeks later, long after it would have died if it was about Quinn. For better or worse, I can't do anything about the original scandal that shone a light on these things, all I can do is engage with people and point out where their initial reaction or what they've heard isn't true. So that's what I do.

 

[Kawalorn]

If you think those are two different groups, then I have a bridge to sell you.

The fact that you think gamers have a right to exclude people from gaming is exactly why gamergate is a bullshit movement and why it will ultimately fail.

Do I have to remind you that the other side keeps shouting "gamers are dead" and "we need to stop making games appealing to them"?

 

[Agayek]

Regardless of what she's leaving out about other stuff uncovered during the process, I feel she hit the nail on the head about both 4chans role in starting and perpetuating this thing, and the general attitude expressed towards women. You say you're baffled at the insistence that 4chan is manipulating anyone, except they have a history of doing just that. Endfathersday, bikini bridge, free bleeding? I'm baffled by the idea that people don't think 4chan could do something like this.

It's not "4chan can't do something like this". It's "4chan can't do something like this... in complete secrecy". Literally everything on the board is public and anonymous, all of the discussion is in the open and available to the public eye, so how do they manage all of that?

Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, Quinn's conclusions regarding the chat segments she grabbed generally don't even match the chat she highlights to support them, which immediately pulls into question the legitimacy of her overall conclusion.

Further-furthermore, let's assume you're right and 4chan did orchestrate thezoepost and manufactured outrage in order to harass Quinn (despite the fact that Grayson and Quinn's relationship was confirmed by Totillo and no one personally involved has actually denied any of it), how does that in any way negate everything else that's come up since then? How is all of the evidence that's come up about cronyism, conflicts of interest, the complete lack of barrier between press and their subjects, cherry-picking stories to best fit their narrative, and all of the other stuff that's been dragged kicking and screaming into the light in any way negated by the whole thing being started because a handful of jackasses wanted to harass a woman over the internet? How does that actually work?

I linked the article in the first place because I thought it would articulate better how I personally felt. I don't need an article to justify my personal opinions on gamergate. You may not like my opinion, and you may disagree with em, but you haven't risen to actually showing that what I'm claiming is wrong.

Never said you did. You provided the article as your argument why gamergate's full of shit, I disagreed, provided my arguments for why I disagreed, and (and this part probably should have been more clear, but I'm tired) I asked for your rebuttal.

Can you prove that?

Sure, go play the game, and it becomes fairly obvious. Anders' character was extremely mutated from DA:A to DA2, enough so that his sexual orientation changed entirely, as was Isabella's, though to a significantly lesser extent given her smaller role in DA:O.

It may have been shoehorned in, but that wasn't what was detrimental to the game. It was that they did it without taking the time to give the game good writing.

So, again, it wasn't that they added inclusivity, it was that they didn't provide good writing.

Again, because I'm sensing you trying to lay a verbal trap of some kind, I have no goddamn issue with games becoming more inclusive or diverse or whatever. I don't particularly care what I'm playing or who I'm playing as, so long as it's interesting and fun.

That said, I still maintain that the writing was as poor as it was because they shoehorned in the inclusivity and didn't know how to handle it. They absolutely could have done it better and it would have been fine. There's nothing wrong with inclusivity and diversity in and of itself. What's wrong is that the team on DA2 didn't know how to handle it, but they did it anyway, and it created a shoddy product.

I'm not arguing hypotheticals here. They forced every character to be bisexual in the name of inclusivity when they couldn't handle it and the game was made worse as a result. That's it.

No, they aren't. People pushing for diversity/progessiveness/inclusivity have zero control over artists or devs. Devs may -decide- that changing something about the game is preferable to getting bad press, but again, no one is being forced. 'Save the boob plate' sounds like a whiney tirade about how unfair it is that consumers are telling him they don't like his designs, and instead of trying to understand the criticism, he doubles down on the 'Don't change teh arts!, all while displaying a complete lack of awareness (comparing Nariko to Kratos? Dude doesn't even understand the concept of the male power fantasy apparently if he's going to draw that kind of false comparison)

Except that's not what happened. It's basically the same thing that happened to TFYC, except Larian had an out in buckling to pressure. If they hadn't changed it, the game would have been run into the ground, regardless of its merit or lack thereof, purely on the assumption that it was sexist. It's censorship by committee.

Sorry, but no. There may be a certain point in parenting where it's preferable to teach kids to make up their own mind, such as after they've started to aquire critical thinking skills, but you don't reason with small children. Their minds simply don't work that way. You want your kid to learn empathy? Teach them to share.

Social contract boils down to the same thing. I may as well complain that people are forcing their views on me because it's illegal to murder, and I really really really want to get to murderin.

edit: This'll be my last post tonight, I need to get to sleep.

Not really, because murdering someone then takes away someone's ability to choose. See how that works? It's called the Law of Equal Liberty [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_equal_liberty].

That's all I'll say on the matter though, cuz it's pretty clear we're always gonna disagree on that, and I gotta get to bed myself.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

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

Depends on what you mean.

If you use 'gamers' to mean 'people who play games' then obviously those exist, and I'm one of them.

If you use 'gamers' the way 'gamergate' does, then no. There is no small insular group of people who 'deserves' games and has the right to exclude everyone else from them.

If you think those are two different groups, then I have a bridge to sell you.

The fact that you think gamers have a right to exclude people from gaming is exactly why gamergate is a bullshit movement and why it will ultimately fail.

You have the wrong idea about GamerGate if you think it has anything to do with exclusion. I've been seeing it be far more inclusive than those who I would brand SJWs.

Less of course you and I both claim we are both pointing out the perspective extremists.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

If we allow the actions of a few to effect the whole, then these sites under scrutiny and those defending them all doxx 13 year olds and threaten them with physical violence, and think all mean should be killed.

The best part is seeing people defend his harassers by saying "he deserved it." If we are talking about the same case, it's the one where redzos was getting doxxed for saying that rape is ok to joke about right?

Third, I am not exactly sure anonymously saying nasty things to people via the internet constitutes harassment.

Technically it can. But it's not really part of the issue considering everyone here can agree that harassment is not ok.

 

[SNCommand]

Hasn't this whole thing though been damage control by gaming journalism to try and make this go away? Personally I hope people don't forget that gaming journalism and the indie developer crowd is one incestuous mess, where they're all friends, and give back rubs when needed, the corruption is so blatant, but because they're not politicians it makes it ok

 

[Vibhor]

Hasn't this whole thing though been damage control by gaming journalism to try and make this go away? Personally I hope people don't forget that gaming journalism and the indie developer crowd is one incestuous mess, where they're all friends, and give back rubs when needed, the corruption is so blatant, but because they're not politicians it makes it ok

The best part was the gamasutra article someone wrote which challenged people to a "duel"
He really took the term white knight seriously.

 

[SNCommand]

Hasn't this whole thing though been damage control by gaming journalism to try and make this go away? Personally I hope people don't forget that gaming journalism and the indie developer crowd is one incestuous mess, where they're all friends, and give back rubs when needed, the corruption is so blatant, but because they're not politicians it makes it ok

The best part was the gamasutra article someone wrote which challenged people to a "duel"
He really took the term white knight seriously.

That duel would be easy then, he would bring a lance to a gun fight

 

[Lady Larunai]

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.

I like to refer to this one myself http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/04/men-are-harassed-more-than-women-online.html

 

[Jux]

It's not "4chan can't do something like this". It's "4chan can't do something like this... in complete secrecy". Literally everything on the board is public and anonymous, all of the discussion is in the open and available to the public eye, so how do they manage all of that?

Secrecy? I basically pointed out a number of quotes from the IRC log planning the harassment. The fact that it snowballed might have been out of their control, but they started it.

Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, Quinn's conclusions regarding the chat segments she grabbed generally don't even match the chat she highlights to support them, which immediately pulls into question the legitimacy of her overall conclusion.

Which has what to do with me exactly?

Further-furthermore, let's assume you're right and 4chan did orchestrate thezoepost and manufactured outrage in order to harass Quinn (despite the fact that Grayson and Quinn's relationship was confirmed by Totillo and no one personally involved has actually denied any of it), how does that in any way negate everything else that's come up since then? How is all of the evidence that's come up about cronyism, conflicts of interest, the complete lack of barrier between press and their subjects, cherry-picking stories to best fit their narrative, and all of the other stuff that's been dragged kicking and screaming into the light in any way negated by the whole thing being started because a handful of jackasses wanted to harass a woman over the internet? How does that actually work?

You may as well point to colonialism and say 'but look at all the good that came out of it!'.

Never said you did. You provided the article as your argument why gamergate's full of shit, I disagreed, provided my arguments for why I disagreed, and (and this part probably should have been more clear, but I'm tired) I asked for your rebuttal.

And my rebuttal is the same now as it was before, nothing has changed there.

Sure, go play the game, and it becomes fairly obvious. Anders' character was extremely mutated from DA:A to DA2, enough so that his sexual orientation changed entirely, as was Isabella's, though to a significantly lesser extent given her smaller role in DA:O.

I played the game, and the fact that the characters were given poor writing is not evidence that the poor writing was a direct result of inclusivity. If that were the case, then the changing the writing wouldn't have made it better, since the core problem would have been 'inclusivity'. It wasn't the core problem though, the writing was.

Again, because I'm sensing you trying to lay a verbal trap of some kind, I have no goddamn issue with games becoming more inclusive or diverse or whatever. I don't particularly care what I'm playing or who I'm playing as, so long as it's interesting and fun.

That said, I still maintain that the writing was as poor as it was because they shoehorned in the inclusivity and didn't know how to handle it. They absolutely could have done it better and it would have been fine. There's nothing wrong with inclusivity and diversity in and of itself. What's wrong is that the team on DA2 didn't know how to handle it, but they did it anyway, and it created a shoddy product.

The writing was poor because the writers were either bad or lazy. That has nothing to do with them trying to make the game more inclusive.

I'm not arguing hypotheticals here. They forced every character to be bisexual in the name of inclusivity when they couldn't handle it and the game was made worse as a result. That's it.

Which is the product of bad writing.

Except that's not what happened. It's basically the same thing that happened to TFYC, except Larian had an out in buckling to pressure. If they hadn't changed it, the game would have been run into the ground, regardless of its merit or lack thereof, purely on the assumption that it was sexist. It's censorship by committee.

Boohoo, you may as well claim that boycotts are censorship then. (They aren't). No one is keeping the guy from drawing how he wants. But just because he wants to draw a certain way doesn't mean he's owed the chance to put that art in a game, unless he wants to develop and publish the game himself.

Not really, because murdering someone then takes away someone's ability to choose. See how that works? It's called the Law of Equal Liberty [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_equal_liberty].

Christ on a cracker I feel like I'm arguing with a libertarian. Look, you said that forcing views on someone is never acceptable. I have already shown this to be false, both in the case of parenting and in the social contract. Regardless of the Law of Equal Liberty, I have already demonstrated that we force the view on people that murder is bad and it won't be tolerated. Hell, if you don't like that example, use the 'but I don't want to pay taxes!' example. We have an entire system of laws based on forcing a particular view on everyone. That's kinda one of those things that comes along with being a social creature.

Furthermore, no one in gaming is forcing anyone to do anything. No one is putting a gun to anyones head here.

 

[Monokuma]

Secrecy? I basically pointed out a number of quotes from the IRC log planning the harassment. The fact that it snowballed might have been out of their control, but they started it.

You didn't point out somebody planning the harassment. You cherry-picked some quotes from individuals and presented them without context. How did the rest of the room react to those statements you quoted? Who exactly are those individuals in question, regular lurkers or just some anon jumping into the room for the first time just to disappear shortly afterwards? Was the statement something made in jest?
When you quote things, please be so kind and at least provide the necessary context. Cherry picking is a really, really bad thing and almost automatically robs your argument of any legitimacy whatsoever, especially when you claim that it proves something as bad and heinous as a harassment campaign.

 

[geK0]

Honestly, I had no idea people took game journalism THIS seriously.

Edit:
Wait, this is the same community who's most controversial figure is some pretentious amateur feminist blogger who's name will trigger a 20 page flame war; yea, no shock there I guess.