Is it time for feminists to step off our hobby?

[Machine Man 1992]

And they way shit's been going down, the journo's are losing even that. I've been hearing talk of advertisers pulling off Kotaku and Polygon, and there's that one infographic showing a meteoric drop in site traffic after all those "gamers are dead" articles.

Advertisers love how gamers flock to glorified gaming blogs, but if gamers aren't, they're going to take their ball and go find somewhere else that's profitable.

I was curious so I checked Kotaku. Looks like the meteoric fall directly coincides with a meteoric rise that was fueled by this entire controversy to begin with. Their post-fall levels are actually above or roughly equivalent to their previous peak, which was in April. So...yeah.

Kotaku has been click-baiting with sensationalistic rubbish for years. It clearly works for them. I highly doubt they're going anywhere. What's the other one? Polygon? What's the URL for that?

EDIT - Nevermind looked it up for myself. Exact same pattern, only Polygon's current level is actually quite a bit higher than their previous peak, and the downward slope is more evidently beginning to level out.

Can I see the infographic? Why do I suspect it only shows the last couple of weeks?

Sites had big controversy. It drove a lot of traffic. Controversy is dying down, and so are site views. News at eleven I guess.

That infographic was in the comments at Moviebob's GameOverthinker, in a comment by an irishman named Sabre and with response by me. It's in there, I know it, but I'm having trouble finding it.

EDIT: Found it! http://i.imgur.com/1wyEap9.png

Edit 2: Very sneaky guys, but look at the bottoms of those graphs; they only show until after July.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

That infographic was in the comments at Moviebob's GameOverthinker, in a comment by an irishman named Sabre and with response by me. It's in there, I know it, but I'm having trouble finding it.

EDIT: Found it! http://i.imgur.com/1wyEap9.png

Well, at least they weren't selective.

You can look right at that and see that Kotaku and Polygon probably saw a benefit from this more than anything. Their post "GamerGate" levels are actually above what they enjoyed before all this happened. All you're seeing is the rise and fall of a controversy that generated a lot of traffic. Was ludicrous for anyone to conclude it was "GamerGate" tearing the site down.

RPS...did RPS even engage during that whole fiasco? I can't remember them doing anything, but knowing RPS they probably did. They're having an ugly slump, but they've had worse slumps before. There has also been an ungodly dearth of high profile PC releases over the last couple of months, which can't be helping them.

Gamasutra is definitely taking it on the nose. Whether it's GamerGate or something else I can't even speculate. I don't visit that site and wasn't even aware it existed before now.

Which was the site that fired the first "Gamers are all bunch of stupid tits" shots? Was it them?

 

[Fappy]

And they way shit's been going down, the journo's are losing even that. I've been hearing talk of advertisers pulling off Kotaku and Polygon, and there's that one infographic showing a meteoric drop in site traffic after all those "gamers are dead" articles.

Advertisers love how gamers flock to glorified gaming blogs, but if gamers aren't, they're going to take their ball and go find somewhere else that's profitable.

I was curious so I checked Kotaku. Looks like the meteoric fall directly coincides with a meteoric rise that was fueled by this entire controversy to begin with. Their post-fall levels are actually above or roughly equivalent to their previous peak, which was in April. So...yeah.

Kotaku has been click-baiting with sensationalistic rubbish for years. It clearly works for them. I highly doubt they're going anywhere. What's the other one? Polygon? What's the URL for that?

EDIT - Nevermind looked it up for myself. Exact same pattern, only Polygon's current level is actually quite a bit higher than their previous peak, and the downward slope is more evidently beginning to level out.

Can I see the infographic? Why do I suspect it only shows the last couple of weeks?

Sites had big controversy. It drove a lot of traffic. Controversy is dying down, and so are site views. News at eleven I guess.

That infographic was in the comments at Moviebob's GameOverthinker, in a comment by an irishman named Sabre and with response by me. It's in there, I know it, but I'm having trouble finding it.

EDIT: Found it! http://i.imgur.com/1wyEap9.png

Edit 2: Very sneaky guys, but look at the bottoms of those graphs; they only show until after July.

I'm no statistician, but those peaks and valleys look pretty ordinary with the possible exception of Gamasutra. As Guppy pointed out, the controversy peaked and then people lost interest. I imagine you'll see something similar for the Escapist as well.

 

[IceForce]

EDIT: Found it! http://i.imgur.com/1wyEap9.png

That doesn't prove anything. According to that graph, those sites are in no worse situation than they've ever been before.

Edit 2: Very sneaky guys, but look at the bottoms of those graphs; they only show until after July.

I'm not sure what you mean. They show all the way up to September.

Look at the scale. The first (unlabelled) mark after July is obviously August. And the far-right edge of the graph is September.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

That infographic was in the comments at Moviebob's GameOverthinker, in a comment by an irishman named Sabre and with response by me. It's in there, I know it, but I'm having trouble finding it.

EDIT: Found it! http://i.imgur.com/1wyEap9.png

Well, at least they weren't selective.

You can look right at that and see that Kotaku and Polygon probably saw a benefit from this more than anything. Their post "GamerGate" levels are actually above what they enjoyed before all this happened. All you're seeing is the rise and fall of a controversy that generated a lot of traffic. Was ludicrous for anyone to conclude it was "GamerGate" tearing the site down.

RPS...did RPS even engage during that whole fiasco? I can't remember them doing anything, but knowing RPS they probably did. They're having an ugly slump, but they've had worse slumps before. There has also been an ungodly dearth of high profile PC releases over the last couple of months, which can't be helping them.

Gamasutra is definitely taking it on the nose. Whether it's GamerGate or something else I can't even speculate. I don't visit that site and wasn't even aware it existed before now.

Which was the site that fired the first "Gamers are all bunch of stupid tits" shots? Was it them?

Basically every site tangentially related to games put out a hit piece, all within the span of about 48 hours.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

EDIT: Found it! http://i.imgur.com/1wyEap9.png

That doesn't prove anything. According to that graph, those sites are in no worse situation than they've ever been before.

Edit 2: Very sneaky guys, but look at the bottoms of those graphs; they only show until after July.

I'm not sure what you mean. They show all the way up to September.

Look at the scale. The first (unlabelled) mark after July is obviously August. And the far-right edge of the graph is September.

I'm saying I was bamboozled by statistics.

Damn, dirty statistics. I always hated that class!

I explained how it's blackmail in post 650.

Yeah, blackmail doesn't work that way either, Guerilla. Not even remotely accurate.

Keep trying, though. Eventually you might hit on the actual definition of "blackmail" or "censorship" just by luck. Stopped clocks, and all that.

I'm not interested in arguing semantics. Blackmail might even be exaggeration, I don't know, but everyone understands the gist of my post. There's a vast difference between suggesting something and constant non-stop whining while throwing serious accusations at developers until they obey. If it's not blackmail whatever it is it's preeeetty close to it.

Constant whining while throwing serious accusations at developers until they obey? shit, you could say the same thing about gamergate and the quinn thread probably. no wait yeah they're pretty much the same thing.

Hardly.

Gamergate and the Quinnspiracy is, was, and forever will be about corruption in the games journalism. Games journalists answer TO US. They have jobs BECAUSE OF GAMERS. They built their careers off our interests. If they want to alienate, piss off and attack the people WHO GIVE THEM MONEY, then they have no one to blame but themselves when the bottom falls out they end up on their asses.

In other words, there's difference between harassing game developers to alter their art in the name of muh feelz, and demanding that self proclaimed journalists have integrity and out any conflicts of interest.

"Games developers answer TO US. They have jobs BECAUSE OF GAMERS. They built their careers off our interests. If they want to alienate, piss off and attack the people WHO GIVE THEM MONEY, then they have no one to blame but themselves when the bottom falls out they end up on their asses."

How are they different again?

Way to dissprove the gamergate people are making whony entitled demands by making a whiny entitled demand

You might want to look up "entitled", because I don't think it means what you think it means.

Just because you don't like the truth, doesn't mean it ain't the truth. GamerGate is WINNING.

Claiming you are the reason someone has a job, and they should follow you or else they won't have a job is the definition of entitlement. It doesn't stop being entitlement just because your side is doing it.

And honestly, I would disagree. Interest in gamergate is already calming down as people drop out. Most news stories are still just sensationalist click bait about how bad the gamergate people are, the very type of journalism you claim to fight against. Gamergate succeeded in rocking the boat a margin, nut they certainly aren't winning. Unless of course your plan is to wear them down over years un which case good luck.

I'm saying, all I've been saying, is that games journalism AS A WHOLE exist because of the interest of gamers. The Games Journalism industry was formed because there was money to be made off gamers looking for information on upcoming releases and reviews on games before we (the consumers) dropped cash on them.

Now that the journo's have been doing their damnest to burn that bridge, they're going to lose their source of revenue: those lovely clicks.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Basically every site tangentially related to games put out a hit piece, all within the span of about 48 hours.

Man I should go back and read some of them.

Found what appears to be Rock Paper Shotgun's response: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/08/videogames-are-for-everybody/

Hardly seems like a "hit piece" to me. Maybe there was another hit piece I missed.

Now that the journo's have been doing their damnest to burn that bridge, they're going to lose their source of revenue: those lovely clicks.

I wouldn't hold my breath. The VAST majority of gamers are likely only tangentially aware of the controversy, if they're aware of it at all. They may lose a small, vocal percentage of the enthusiast crowd, but even that's unlikely.

Let's remember previous last stands, like how we were going to stick it to Blizzard over their anti-consumer policies in Diablo 3, or how EA was going to pay the piper for its hideous practices every year going back to the 90's.

I'm a gamer, and I love gaming, and I will always feel a kinship to other people who like gaming, but we really are a pack of scattered idiots. I have a hard time imagining a "movement" of gamers accomplishing much except the proverbial tempest in tea cup.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Edit 2: Very sneaky guys, but look at the bottoms of those graphs; they only show until after July.

Nope. They show until the end of August. Each notch at the bottom is a month, after July you still have one notch for August.

Fucking graphs! How do they work?

 

[veloper]

That infographic was in the comments at Moviebob's GameOverthinker, in a comment by an irishman named Sabre and with response by me. It's in there, I know it, but I'm having trouble finding it.

EDIT: Found it! http://i.imgur.com/1wyEap9.png

Well, at least they weren't selective.

You can look right at that and see that Kotaku and Polygon probably saw a benefit from this more than anything. Their post "GamerGate" levels are actually above what they enjoyed before all this happened. All you're seeing is the rise and fall of a controversy that generated a lot of traffic. Was ludicrous for anyone to conclude it was "GamerGate" tearing the site down.

RPS...did RPS even engage during that whole fiasco? I can't remember them doing anything, but knowing RPS they probably did. They're having an ugly slump, but they've had worse slumps before. There has also been an ungodly dearth of high profile PC releases over the last couple of months, which can't be helping them.

Gamasutra is definitely taking it on the nose. Whether it's GamerGate or something else I can't even speculate. I don't visit that site and wasn't even aware it existed before now.

Which was the site that fired the first "Gamers are all bunch of stupid tits" shots? Was it them?

Basically every site tangentially related to games put out a hit piece, all within the span of about 48 hours.

I haven't seen anywhere else anything so extreme coming from a staffer, as Leigh Alexander's rant on Gamasutra though. That might explain the difference.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Basically every site tangentially related to games put out a hit piece, all within the span of about 48 hours.

Man I should go back and read some of them.

Found what appears to be Rock Paper Shotgun's response: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/08/videogames-are-for-everybody/

Hardly seems like a "hit piece" to me. Maybe there was another hit piece I missed.

It's the same garbage about how the GamerGate thing was all about "attacking women" and "harassment."

They can dress it up in all the politically correct horesshit they want, but you can't slip nothin' by ol' MachineMan!

 

[BloatedGuppy]

It's the same garbage about how the GamerGate thing was all about "attacking women" and "harassment."

I don't see them name check GamerGate at all.

Are you disputing that there is harassment going on? If it's anything like DickWolves, and I'm willing to bet it is (and likely involves many of the same parties on both sides), then there is probably a HILARIOUS amount of harassment going on. Really ugly, nasty harassment.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Snip

This sounds weird coming from me, but I'm optimistic about this: the controversy managed to get some advertisers pulled off the big sites, and motivated the Escapist to review their code of ethics. It exposed the ugly underside of the industry and outed many people working in said industry as colossal douchenozzles.

I'm going to call that a win. It might not be the huge, world shaking victory we want, but for me it's good enough. With a community as vocal and disparate as " the gaming community", that's as far as we're going to get. We aren't a hive mind, we're chaos.

And this is getting off topic, we might want to move this to the Quinnspiracy threads before the banhammer comes down on my head.

It's the same garbage about how the GamerGate thing was all about "attacking women" and "harassment."

I don't see them name check GamerGate at all.

Are you disputing that there is harassment going on? If it's anything like DickWolves, and I'm willing to bet it is (and likely involves many of the same parties on both sides), then there is probably a HILARIOUS amount of harassment going on. Really ugly, nasty harassment.

Well, that's what I get for jumping the gun I guess. I've developed this Pavlovian reaction whenever I see the words "women" "harassment" and "gamers" in the same paragraph.

It's just that this thing was never "about" women, it was about journalists and the fact they would do anything to no have to look in the mirror. It's trying to make the controversy about something it's not.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

This sounds weird coming from me, but I'm optimistic about this: the controversy managed to get some advertisers pulled off the big sites, and motivated the Escapist to review their code of ethics. It exposed the ugly underside of the industry and outed many people working in said industry as colossal douchenozzles.

I'm going to call that a win. It might not be the huge, world shaking victory we want, but for me it's good enough. With a community as vocal and disparate as " the gaming community", that's as far as we're going to get. We aren't a hive mind, we're chaos.

And this is getting off topic, we might want to move this to the Quinnspiracy threads before the banhammer comes down on my head.

You're not off topic. This thread is a fucking gong show, we've discussed so many different things in here by now. You're more on topic than most, frankly.

I think more and more you're going to see traditional "games journalism" dilute, and become a full fledged enthusiast press in earnest. Less Kotakus, more Total Biscuits. And that will be good, really. Will you get total transparency from enthusiasts? Of course not. But it has always been, and will continue to be, incumbent upon gamers to think critically about what they read and watch and make intelligent purchases. At the very least, the hand-to-mouth relationship streamers and self-employed gaming personalities have with their audiences means they'll be less likely to scribe editorials blasting their fans or act as attack dogs for the industry every time a publisher gets butthurt.

Well, that's what I get for jumping the gun I guess. I've developed this Pavlovian reaction whenever I see the words "women" "harassment" and "gamers" in the same paragraph.

It's just confirmation bias. And I don't say that to be mean, confirmation bias isn't an insult, it's something every human does. It's worth being aware of it because we're often wearing blinders formed by our opinions.

It's just that this thing was never "about" women, it was about journalists and the fact they would do anything to no have to look in the mirror. It's trying to make the controversy about something it's not.

It was about both, really. A lot of people brought their own agendas to that particular controversy. Your agenda might have been "Shady journalists at it again!". You can be certain other people brought uglier agendas to the party.

 

[nuclearday]

So... I am confused about the journalistic integrity angle with all of this.

Now, personally I think there's a difference between a pundit, enthusiast reporting and actual journalism. Gaming has lots of the first two, and not a whole lot of what I'd consider the latter, always has. That said, we're in an industry where I suppose it can be hard to tell the difference between advertising and news reporting and the line does often get blurred.

So I can see why there is a push toward more transparency in gaming sites and reporting and a clearer distinction on just what role any particular writer is trying to fulfill. And to some extent at least I can get behind that. I might not really have much of a problem with a writer that has a potential conflict of interest, but I'd support the idea that we should expect a writer to be forthright about them.

Now I'm not an expert on Gamergate, so maybe someone can fill me in on what really is an honest question:

1) If the issue is journalistic integrity then why does it appear that so much focus has been on Zoe Quinn and not the journalist? (I find it telling I don't even know the guy's name off-hand.) I don't see why a designer can't have a relationship with whoever they want - videogames themselves I don't see as falling under the umbrella standard of journalistic integrity, right? If anyone's in breach of some kind of ethics it's the journalist.

2) From what I've gathered, said journalist never actually reviewed any of Zoe Quinn's games. So is there actually a conflict of interest, or did he actually write a favorable review that I don't know about (which I am admitting could be a real possibility.)

 

[Doradorado]

I do not agree with Anita's criticisms and I view her as a modern day Jack Thompson. I also think SJW are some of the stupidest people I've seen on the net. Now that that is out of the way, I want more women developers and I want them to make the games they want to make. I want an industry that judges people on their creativity, their ingenuity and their products not whether they're men or women, black or white etc. I want more inclusivity but I don't want it to be some cheap, forced attempt to look PC. All I want is for us to enjoy some video games without being told what and what not to enjoy.

 

[GeneralFungi]

The hobby doesn't belong to anyone, and has more then enough room to include people interested in feminism. This industry needs people from all parties criticizing it, and while we're experiencing some growing pains (these past incidents) I believe that when the fires burn out and the dust settles we'll have a better and healthier video game ecosystem for it.

Other people enjoying video games doesn't necessarily need to mean less gaming for the 'hardcore'.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Other people enjoying video games doesn't necessarily need to mean less gaming for the 'hardcore'.

But it will, as producers realize that hardcore is less profitable and more niche.
Casual on the other hand, is becoming much easier to profit from, partly because the market is generally less experienced and more naive, but mostly because it's an easier market for new people to enter into.

And you can break those (VERY BROAD) markets down into smaller and smaller pieces, but the same logic applies.

We see this in other media markets.

For example, a recent trend shows more movies are bumping themselves down from an R-rating to a PG-13 rating.
Why? Because PG13 means hitting the teenager market, who are both more gullible than adults and still have cash.

There's actually something of a shortage of R-rated movies in theaters now because the R->PG13 gambit is very commonly done with remakes (which themselves comprise a large share of what is getting made).