GamerGate's Image Problem

[doomrider7]

I agree that there's no statue of limitations, but having people like Milo and Breibart is NOT a good way doing things given their shady as all hell shenanigans they've pulled.

I agree, but we fight with what we got, not with what we wish we had. We've been trying to get other people. I personally called and emailed a couple of places trying to ask for them to investigate these things, even though I'm horrible over the phone because of my disabilities. But it seems like they're just going on what the Games Media is saying, when they're precisely our problem right now.

Part of the problem is that sexism has been a HUGE problem in the industry for and incredibly long time and has resulted in multiple cases of aggressive and violent harassment(I don't particularly like Sarkiseesian's videos, but I'm not gonna lobby violent and vulgar threats to her) and the fact that it was all triggered by the whole Zoe Quinn scandal which was treated as some kind of major breach of ethics, but the other incidents from the Forbes piece generated little buzz, it's REALLY not a good look in terms of priorities.

It's not in their best interest to question if our priorities are not as they imagine them to look. There is a huge problem in the industry, especially the press; women devs have reported having to perform sexual favors for the press to cover them. This is a press mostly populated by White Males. I honestly agree with the sentiment that there is a problem, but I also think that they're part of it.

Those who seem to be speaking out the loudest about this beforehand have had things revealed about their activities that have brought into question whether they aren't perpetuating the situation for their own benefit.

While I agree that the media IS part of the problem I think it's in different way. Namely a sort of chokehold by the publishers who threaten to pull press release passes. There's a HUGE problem in MMA about this where if you want to cover UFC events on a large scale and attend meetings and media call events and whatnot is to have press release. Problem is, if you do or say ANYTHING the UFC boss Dana White didn't like they can revoke your press release pass instantaneously. You can still interview trainers, fighters, and other figures in the sport, but you're not welcome t any media events and if you want to attend an event then you're buying the ticket and paying for the travel expenses if it's not close to you. All of this leads to a somewhat controlled press. In gaming if a review isn't favored by a publisher they can easily cancel interviews, cut off info, cut off advertisements, or even get you fired and we HAVE seen all of these happen.

 

[doomrider7]

While I agree that the media IS part of the problem I think it's in different way. Namely a sort of chokehold by the publishers who threaten to pull press release passes. There's a HUGE problem in MMA about this where if you want to cover UFC events on a large scale and attend meetings and media call events and whatnot is to have press release. Problem is, if you do or say ANYTHING the UFC boss Dana White didn't like they can revoke your press release pass instantaneously. You can still interview trainers, fighters, and other figures in the sport, but you're not welcome t any media events and if you want to attend an event then you're buying the ticket and paying for the travel expenses if it's not close to you. All of this leads to a somewhat controlled press. In gaming if a review isn't favored by a publisher they can easily cancel interviews, cut off info, cut off advertisements, or even get you fired and we HAVE seen all of these happen.

I think that's a way too. These are problems that we have to solve; the Publishers might eventually come out against us attacking the press for fear that if we win this battle, we'll turn this on them. Our attitude towards the Publisher's actions certainly hasn't been absent, EA didn't get worst company of the year twice in a row for nothing after all (the year before the streak was BP, the one after was Comcast; in the previously mentioned streak one of the Runners-up was Monsanto, Monsanto. I personally like the flavor of science in my vegetables but it's amazing to me that we are mightier consumer activists than the anti-gmo nuts.)

Honestly, I'm not an expert in how things normally work in other Industries with the consumer press and how they manage to avoid this problem (if they do manage it). Further research is necessary. At this point my solution would be a blunt-force information audit enforced by the government and made publically available for press scruitiny, but that's obviously a "bang on the tv to fix the static" solution.

One of my biggest issues I've also had with GamerGate is how it's also used on some sites as a smear campaign for ANYONE who doesn't cowtow the company motto with people like Jim Sterling and Erik Kain being considered weak pathetic shills who sold out to the Indie overlords and people like fucking Milo hailed as bastions of unquestioning Journalistic ethics and honesty when the former two have produced SIGNIFCANTLY better material and have covered gaming for MUCH longer and much more earnestly than the latter and it really bothers me. To both of the their furthering credits, they've never tried to politicize gaming like Milo has.

Here's the link.
http://forums.sherdog.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2807923&page=100

Edit: Here's also a piece by Erik Kain on how all of this fucking mess came to be.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/04/gamergate-a-closer-look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/

 

[C14N]

I definitely agree that there is a huge image problem here that makes me very uncomfortable. I really don't like Quinn very much which is almost completely down to the fact that she played a victim and used that to bully a bunch of mostly benign, male virgins across the web because that was a group nobody would stand up for. There are other problematic things like the TFYC takedown and the censorship too. What I absolutely could not give one single molecule of shit about is the fact that she had sex with 3 guys and it really bothers me when GG people even bring that up. Worse still is when they completely mis-represent the facts by saying it was 5 gaming figures (it was 3) and that she slept with them in exchange for "good reviews" which is demonstably untrue.

What does bother me is that there is this clique/cartel of prominent developers and journalists who will always look out for and support each other no matter what happens, but that isn't made any worse by the fact that they sometimes have sex. It does seem to be a genuine problem that Indiecade is an important competition that is apparently a foregone conclusion for all entrants who have no personal ties to the judges and that some devs are getting free publicity on blogs like Kotaku and Polygon because they're buddies with the writers but again, sex has nothing to do with it.

And a huge problem with this clique culture is that they make up practically the entirety of the "legitimate" sources. What this means is that when something like this does come out, they can all gang up to decry it as misogyny and harassment and to the passerby, there is no reason to believe otherwise. Nobody from this network seems to have written articles about anything wrong that Quinn did or that there are problems in games media. Nobody is even writing balanced articles that criticise people both sides, it's all been one way. It's been completely framed as "gamers hate woman who made game because she's a woman" and nothing that woman says is questioned. Then when it gets passed along to mainstream sources, this is all they have to go on.

And this leaves us with some pretty poor pickings for figureheads. We end up with people like Internet Aristocrat, MundaneMatt and Adam Baldwin, all people who have a past obsessions with attacking feminists and social justice and making it about those issues instead of about honesty and respect. People have desperately tried grasping at more legitimate figures like TotalBiscuit or JonTron but they've really tried not getting involved since the first week or two. The only places that seem to be taking the side of the gamers are conservative blogs like Bretibart, which just makes things look worse. How could someone not willing to dig through all the mess of information NOT see this as just another bunch of angry misogynist gamers? Especially when they try making it about that by constantly over people like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian and making graphs and images labelling various people and groups as "Social Justice Warriors to avoid".

 

[Velventian]

I'm not even going to comment. I'm just going to leave this here for the world to see.

Do all of your trousers come in smarty pants edition or do you have to turn them inside out every 2 weeks to avoid the smell?[/quote]So apparently this gets a warning? Where is the line between being snarky and being rude?

 

[Calbeck]

You can't be mad at gaming journalists for condemning a movement you don't support.

I most certainly can, particularly when the condemnation is manufactured. Similarly, I can be angry at racists for condemning a particular black politician, even if I don't plan to vote for that politico. See how that works?

I don't have to join, support, or even like a given movement to defend it against unacceptable and unprofessional behavior.

 

[Camel]

I honestly don't really care what Leigh or Milo says, you are the one getting offended by someone's opinion, not me. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy.

Why is it her words you have such a problem with, and not his? <-----that's your imagine problem. By all means keep going after her, it means absolutely nothing. Seriously, I don't actually have to defend her. This is not the two sided conflict you made yourself believe.

Protip: When feigning outrage over perceived insults, try and make sure the most visible among you haven't said much worse. It causes people to really not give a shit when you bring it up.

Comment on Leigh Alexander's threat and her article "Gamers are dead", then I will comment on Milo's actions. By the way, Milo made a mistake and quickly apologized, I still don't see anything from Alexander except deleting her tweet with a threat.

 

[Calbeck]

The biggest image problem is that the misogyny was the rally banner for #Gamergate.

The only people I've heard that from are journos who have been exhibiting vitriolic stereotyping of their own core readership. Indeed, that's the only reason I heard about this controversy and began looking into it. It struck me as though Bill Clinton had arrived at a fundraiser and then started a speech about how his fellow Democrats are [insert extremist rhetoric here].

Not OVERT misogyny.

Well of course it can't be any sort of misogyny that one might actually have to show exists outside of one's personal opinions. That would be inconvenient to the pre-existing journalistic narrative that gamers were nigh-universally misogynistic to begin with. In other words, inconvenient to the very articles that GamerGate formed in response to.

this issue of broken journalistic integrity has been HUGE for years.

Not that I've noticed, outside of instances such as the Jayson Blair incident at the New York Times. The difference being, of course, that the NYT itself sussed out the failures of integrity and took action --- instead of presenting Mr. Blair as the victim of harassment due to the issues themselves being raised at all.

Oh, and just in case you were thinking of raising the "but Zoe really WAS harassed with death threats" and so forth... so was Jayson, by people who were incensed over his actions. The harassment and threats directed at Mr. Blair did not serve as a defense for his actions or the failures within the system which allowed him to thrive for so long.

And no one did anything until a guy started trying to tear down his ex for cheating on him.

Specifically, for sleeping with someone who was in a position to advance her career with positive press coverage. Which would get the reporter fired, and the social-climber blacklisted from further dealings, with any actual mainstream news organization.

The conclusion is, major gaming news outlets are not professional, can be plied with sex (and presumably other favors) for better coverage of your products, and in general are not worthy of respect from the gaming community which ostensibly and reasonably expects at least a modicum of objectivity in reporting.

Where were you when Jeff Gerstmann was fired for writing an honest review? Where were you when we were adding "Bullshot" to our vocabulary? Where were you when Eidos was openly manipulating metacritic, or when in 2004 Warner Brothers made influencing metacritic part of the contract for licensed games?

You seem to assume none of these people were right there alongside you. I, for one, most certainly was --- and do you recall when the major names in games journalism turned around and DEFENDED Jeff's firing? Or Eidos? Or Warner? At what point did the newsies turn on the gamers, voices locked in step with one another, declaring huge nebulous swathes of the community (namely, anyone with a problem that a reporter would sleep with a subject of one of his articles) "neckbearded" anything?

Ah, that's right. They didn't. So there's really no comparison, is there?

You can't tell me this isn't about misogyny

This isn't about misogyny. But to you, it has to be, because otherwise the end result of the logic wouldn't form up in the direction you would prefer it go.

I should at least try pointing something crucial out to you, here: I've seen that mentality in operation before.

In diehard Scientologists. That's not meant as an insult... it's meant to suggest you think about what you're actually saying.

 

[RexMundane]

...so has this just become a secondary thread for the Megathread? I'm noticing the Pro-GG:Anti-GG population ratio has lately skewed pretty heavily to Pro, and most comments trying to deal with the thread subject, namely "How people perceive GamerGate" is getting pretty aggressively beaten down for mentioning it. It seems a bit like an angry mob trying to shout out any questioning voices without acknowledging their points in order to... oh fuck me that's ironic.

Side note, shall we start a betting pool on when MovieBob officially becomes Literally Who #4?

 

[Battenberg]

You know what lowers my opinion of many of those involved in Gamergate? The fact that a lot of people are going on about it all being about journalistic integrity and how those in the gaming media need to be made more accountable for this then they proceed to talk about Zoe flippin' Quinn. 'Quinngate' and Quinnspiracy' and all the general hatred directed at her make it clear that, at least for those people, GG is just an excuse to throw some venom and bile out behind the anonymity of an angry mob on the internet. If their claims that all they wanted is transparency in games journalism they would be attacking the actual journalists involved; instead names like Nathan Grayson are basically footnotes
in this whole saga.

EDIT: getting a bit of heat for this, I've replied to one such post - no. 441. Please read that before replying to this post if your point is essentially that I'm missing the point OR that I'm defending someone because of their gender.

 

[Battenberg]

You know what lowers my opinion of many of those involved in Gamergate? The fact that a lot of people are going on about it all being about journalistic integrity and how those in the gaming media need to be made more accountable for this then they proceed to talk about Zoe flippin' Quinn. 'Quinngate' and Quinnspiracy' and all the general hatred directed at her make it clear that, at least for those people, GG is just an excuse to throw some venom and bile out behind the anonymity of an angry mob on the internet. If their claims that all they wanted is transparency in games journalism they would be attacking the actual journalists involved; instead names like Nathan Grayson are basically footnotes
in this whole saga.

The name Zoe Quinn has been banned in the gamergate thread. hell we haven't mentioned her in a long ass while.

Do you know who we are going after?

Randy Pitchford (insulting customers), Anthony Burch (admitting to corruption), Leigh Alexander (racist tweets), Ben Kuchera (hate speech to everyone), Adam Sessler (offensive tweets), The IGF, MovieBob (retweeting racist tweets), and many others.

Currently, the boycott is in full swing and:

Polygon
Gamasutra
Rock Paper Shotgun
Kotaku

are just a few of the boycotted sites. We have been mailing advertisers for the last month so they stop sponsoring hate and intolerance.

If you kept up with things, you'd see that.

Because when the evidence isn't on your side resort to patronizing those who disagree with your point of view. Go to page 1 of this discussion and see how many times Quinn comes up. Ctrl + F told me 44 (although some of that may have been content outside of the thread itself). I also made a point of specifying that my comment was ONLY directed at those who are STILL going on about/ attacking Quinn. And regardless of what GG is about now it started out as being heavily focused on Quinn. First impressions count for a lot and since this topic was specifically about GG's image I thought it was relevant.

 

[Thorn14]

You know what lowers my opinion of many of those involved in Gamergate? The fact that a lot of people are going on about it all being about journalistic integrity and how those in the gaming media need to be made more accountable for this then they proceed to talk about Zoe flippin' Quinn. 'Quinngate' and Quinnspiracy' and all the general hatred directed at her make it clear that, at least for those people, GG is just an excuse to throw some venom and bile out behind the anonymity of an angry mob on the internet. If their claims that all they wanted is transparency in games journalism they would be attacking the actual journalists involved; instead names like Nathan Grayson are basically footnotes
in this whole saga.

To be fair, some of them really have moved on from Quinn.

It's just that they've mostly moved on to freaking out about other women [http://i.imgur.com/PoGtVha.jpg]. Because they just can't help themselves [https://twitter.com/redlianak]. But of course... it's all about integrity.

Whats wrong with the first image? I remember her from when she was first in the news and she still seems like a jerk.

Are we not allowed to criticize women at all?

 

[Battenberg]

Whats wrong with the first image? I remember her from when she was first in the news and she still seems like a jerk.

Are we not allowed to criticize women at all?

That is SO far from what I'm saying, i didn't even come close to insinuating that Quinn is getting heat BECAUSE she's a woman, my point was that if you're going to claim journalists are at fault then go after the journalists, not the person they're apparently letting influence them.

If you want to criticise Quinn on a moral standpoint unrelated to gaming by all means go ahead but that is a discussion that really has nothing to do with journalistic integrity. The people who have pretended otherwise have done, and continue to do, immeasurable harm to the genuine points that gamergate has brought to the public view.

Tl; dr, if you think someone's a douche and want to say so go for it, just don't pretend it's something more than that under the guise of another potentially more worthwhile argument.

Yeah, this discussion. Do you have any idea who started this thread? people who went to the main thread specifically to derail it. To talk about nothing but quinn when people where way past her.

The gamergate thread told them to stop talking about Quinn and Anita.

When they got ignored on the mega thread and told to stop bring her up, they created this thread to then bring her up again and how they hate gamergate.

We have been dealing with it since Baldwin came in. We have had a flood of day 0 accounts and people desperately trying to derail it so they can shut down the thread.

Even TopazFusion of the moderators knows it. He knows that they were trying to do.

My point stands and I think people are misunderstanding it. Regardless of the good that GG might do and regardless of how important the topics the majority of those involved may be talking about there is still a problem with the image the world in general is getting of gamers because of it. That is entirely down to the people who have used it as an excuse to start a vendetta against one person. Those are the people who I hold any kind of grudge against. They have made all gamers look bad and, as one of those gamers, I feel like I have a stake in the opinion the media portrays of us.

To be perfectly clear if you are one of the people who is still attacking Quinn at this point or even one of those who previously has (since that is what made this issue go so public) then you are part of the problem. Those people have done and continue to do damage to the reputation of gamers everywhere and they are the people I have a problem with. If you are part of the genuine debate (which has been overshadowed massively by this issue) and are genuinely trying to improve gaming for everyone by holding journalists accountable for what they say then good on you, I sincerely hope you have some measure of success (although ultimately I think that discussion shouldn't be held under the GG banner because of the attitude others have caused that word to be associated with).

I assume I'll get a few more replies from people who think I'm attacking them personally (which is only the case if you have been/ are attacking Quinn on the basis of it being relevant to journalistic integrity) so this is my blanket reply to those people, I'm not going to re-explain this to every person who quotes me. Happy to reply to other genuine points though.

 

[Nikolaz72]

Snip

Tbh, Gamergates rep is improving. We're steadily getting covered by more and more sites as time goes on, sites that are not part of the problem (tied to the radical elements of the anti-GG movement) but have formerly remained neutral in the whole ordeal.

We could just keep our discussion alive and as time goes on, as they try to censor us, dox the ones who represent us and DDOS us they will just continue to look worse by comparison.

We will reach the point where the general consensus of the common man is that either side (ProGamerJournos/Gamergate) are either equally bad, or the ProGamerJournos are worse. And from there on its smooth sailing compared to what we've had to deal with for the past month.

What GG has going for them is that they don't have to worry about profits or page-hits. However websites like Gamasutra and Kotaku are starting to struggle as they are bleeding readers, be it to things like GamerGate where they are (Rightly) called out for corrupt and unprofessional behavior, or simply being replaced by Youtube Celebrities (The so called Enthusiast Press) some of whom, these days- put far more work into single videos than the 'Journalists' hired by the professional old guard put in their entire week.

They've been alienating their core demographic by corruption and their attempts at increased politicization of games media, I've said it before and I'll say it again. With or without the purplehaired match that lit the powderkeg this time around, it'd have been lit at some point by something else. And if the Corrupt Games Media didn't use women as their shield, they've have found something else to use. Though the Web Feminists do provide a strong supporter in their 'war on gamers' as we've seen them exact strong control of things such as Wikipedia by using Feminist-Moderator groups already in place to support their agenda by tagging 'feminism' onto it.

 

[entelechy]

No this does not apply to everyone involved in GamerGate, but when your most vocal segment presents themselves in such a way then guess what your public image is gonna be?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Provide solid, irrefutable evidence that "our most vocal segment" has actually done this and we will do our best to deal with it.

The seminal videos from your side were made by Internet Aristocrat. Those videos contain plenty of sexism and much of IA's video history contains histrionic rants about social justice activists invading the hobby.

You can't be mad at gaming journalists for condemning a movement you don't support.

I most certainly can, particularly when the condemnation is manufactured. Similarly, I can be angry at racists for condemning a particular black politician, even if I don't plan to vote for that politico. See how that works?

For this analogy to work you would have to be claiming that gaming journalists condemned the anti-Quinn movement for bad reasons. Yet, according to gamergaters, that isn't the case at all. Rather, the argument is that gaming journalists painted with too broad a brush. So, this is more like being angry at the NAACP for condemning a racist politician that you wouldn't vote for because you didn't like the "tone" of their condemnation. And that makes no goddamn sense.

Side note, shall we start a betting pool on when MovieBob officially becomes Literally Who #4?

Probably never, since MovieBob is a dude. My money would be on Liana Kerzner.

Do you know who we are going after?

Randy Pitchford (insulting customers), Anthony Burch (admitting to corruption), Leigh Alexander (racist tweets), Ben Kuchera (hate speech to everyone), Adam Sessler (offensive tweets), The IGF, MovieBob (retweeting racist tweets), and many others.

Well, so, with regard to Pitchford, Kuchera and Sessler, you're pretty much just butthurt that they disagree with you and used strong language. No actual corruption there. You just don't like them. The same may be true of MovieBob, but I'm not aware of the specific allegation you're making. As for Leigh Alexander, she has one potentially racist tweet from well before gamergate existed. Mostly you seem to be after her for, in your opinion, painting with too broad of a brush. So, that leaves the IGF and Burch which may involve actual issues of ethics and integrity in the industry.

With regard to Burch and the IGF, can you provide a link describing the accusations? The main thread OP hasn't been updated to include either of those.

Yes, gamergate may have moved on, but to what? It's mostly a meta-discussion that because you weren't taken seriously when the movement was mostly about Quinn, that this is some kind of terrible breach of trust? Gamergate's main argument is "You shouldn't have been so mean to these other people who totally don't represent our movement!" Buh?

 

[RexMundane]

Side note, shall we start a betting pool on when MovieBob officially becomes Literally Who #4?

Probably never, since MovieBob is a dude. My money would be on Liana Kerzner.[/quote]

Hm, good call, he might make #5 though... Or, since there's soon going to end up being so many to sort from, and it's going to become a bit obvious and problematic for them to keep on publically "anonymizing" women, they might start a whole new nickname like "Literally Whom," adding the M for male to keep things straight. #1 is Moviebob, #2 Phil Fish, #3 Jim Sterling...

Do you know who we are going after?

Randy Pitchford (insulting customers), Anthony Burch (admitting to corruption), Leigh Alexander (racist tweets), Ben Kuchera (hate speech to everyone), Adam Sessler (offensive tweets), The IGF, MovieBob (retweeting racist tweets), and many others.

Well, so, with regard to Pitchford, Kuchera and Sessler, you're pretty much just butthurt that they disagree with you and used strong language. No actual corruption there. You just don't like them. The same may be true of MovieBob, but I'm not aware of the specific allegation you're making. As for Leigh Alexander, she has one potentially racist tweet from well before gamergate existed. Mostly you seem to be after her for, in your opinion, painting with too broad of a brush. So, that leaves the IGF and Burch which may involve actual issues of ethics and integrity in the industry.

With regard to Burch and the IGF, can you provide a link describing the accusations? The main thread OP hasn't been updated to include either of those.

Yes, gamergate may have moved on, but to what? It's mostly a meta-discussion that because you weren't taken seriously when the movement was mostly about Quinn, that this is some kind of terrible breach of trust? Gamergate's main argument is "You shouldn't have been so mean to these other people who totally don't represent our movement!" Buh?

Yeah, alot of the current GamerGate beef is over "Look at all the mean things you've said as a reaction to our behavior," which... yeah there's really no way to address that one way or another. We're all agreed, this whole ordeal has brought behavior out of people who should know better.

The Burch Corruption (Sequel to The Burch Supremacy by Robert Ludlum) is, as far as I can tell, from one tweet he made early on. In the face of dealing with personal attacks from GG, and claims that it was never ever ever about Zoe Quinn or sexism, he was pointing out other instances of "Where were you when this happened then?" where the reaction was nothing like it is now. Among these, he pointed out that he used to be Features Editor at Destructoid before working with Gearbox and writing Borderlands 2, and that nobody was claiming that Dtoid gave favorable reviews to BL2 because of his connections. At which point, GG began claiming that Dtoid gave favorable reviews to BL2 because of his connections. Reviews which, while favorable, it's worth acknowledging are below the metacritic average. It's laughable. They only have him generating a hypothetical as an example to prove a seperate point to go on to attack Burch and Pitchford, and just ran with it.

The IGF thing keeps being nebulous, but the best I can suss out is that Indie Devs allegedly used the context of an award show to vote for one another and give one another press and cash rewards. I don't know what's been conclusively proven, and most of the information they've gathered is largely from what was made publically available by the parties involved in the first place, so so not exactly grand coverup perhaps? But they've been talking about racketeering charges for two weeks now and... I mean look, by now, if there were an actual law broken the cops would've been notified and an investigation started, right? So I dunno. Otherwise it basically reads like how the Oscars for instance are voted on by actors, producers, etc., who tend to be friendly with one another. You can read it as corrupt collusion if you wish, but there's so little at stake there's really not much "there" there.

 

[entelechy]

The Burch Corruption (Sequel to The Burch Supremacy by Robert Ludlum) is, as far as I can tell, from one tweet he made early on. In the face of dealing with personal attacks from GG, and claims that it was never ever ever about Zoe Quinn or sexism, he was pointing out other instances of "Where were you when this happened then?" where the reaction was nothing like it is now. Among these, he pointed out that he used to be Features Editor at Destructoid before working with Gearbox and writing Borderlands 2, and that nobody was claiming that Dtoid gave favorable reviews to BL2 because of his connections. At which point, GG began claiming that Dtoid gave favorable reviews to BL2 because of his connections. Reviews which, while favorable, it's worth acknowledging are below the metacritic average. It's laughable. They only have him generating a hypothetical as an example to prove a seperate point to go on to attack Burch and Pitchford, and just ran with it.

The IGF thing keeps being nebulous, but the best I can suss out is that Indie Devs allegedly used the context of an award show to vote for one another and give one another press and cash rewards. I don't know what's been conclusively proven, and most of the information they've gathered is largely from what was made publically available by the parties involved in the first place, so so not exactly grand coverup perhaps? But they've been talking about racketeering charges for two weeks now and... I mean look, by now, if there were an actual law broken the cops would've been notified and an investigation started, right? So I dunno. Otherwise it basically reads like how the Oscars for instance are voted on by actors, producers, etc., who tend to be friendly with one another. You can read it as corrupt collusion if you wish, but there's so little at stake there's really not much "there" there.

So, Ultratwinkie was Gish Galloping [http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop] again. I had suspected that, but didn't know the details and couldn't comment.