Silvanus said:
Lightknight said:
Balance is a real issue. They give huge podiums to sides that they're buddy buddy with while ignoring other groups. This is a form of media control through curation via nepotism/cronyism. We see specific agendas being catapulted in a way that naturally leads to other groups being disenfranchised.
I'll give a really easy example. How about honest criticisms of Anita Sarkeesian's damsel tropes. Journalists like Liana Kerzner had really strong counters to them but didn't feel safe to give a rebuttal because a man would be deemed as sexist and a female might be pigeon holed into just being the anti-Anita and have their career fall with Anita's or be deemed anti-feminist just for disagreeing with the topic.
The Escapist didn't give huge podiums to any side in the discussion over Anita Sarkeesian, IIRC. I recall a few news items, but not much more. All else I recall was an edition of No Right Answer entitled "Is Anita Sarkeesian Wrong", which contained numerous criticisms of her work.
Actually, Movie Bob is at the root of this as far as The Escapist. He flagrantly used his podium to support her. He (a movie reviewer by the way, one that has taken several pictures alongside her) creating a video about how unfair it is to criticize someone's arguments as being similar to Jack Thompson's and demanding they stop and writing articles like how she is "the Most Dangerous Woman in Video Games".
Not only that, but there has been a serious lack of critique of her work. She has made huge and significant mistakes. From accidentally defining objectification with the definition of a grammatical object (for example, "Me talking to you" would be objectifying you by her logic because you are receiving an action and are therefor the object of the sentence) to various other issues that would call her character and intent into question. No discussion at all about someone who is clearly so notable in our industry when we get articles about random stuff other people said or did all the time. How about that time Anita said that Sexism against men doesn't exist? Oh boy, the times we've had not hearing the stuff that should be giving people pause.
Honestly, the vast majority of people here disagree with Sarkeesian in one way or another. Vast. Most of the people who end up defending her do not agree with her, but object equally to the hyperbole thrown. Honest criticism is fine. Nobody objected when No Right Answer did it, because they had a degree of measure and self-restraint.
Honest criticism is generally fine amongst the community. But the general staff just omits discussion about it. No Right Answer is a really unusual content provider for us to have. They're basically the average gamer/nerd and that makes them perfect for this kind of thing.
So I agree that the Escapist has been one of the best at this. But other content creators have been antagonistic on this front.
The escapist is particularly good at letting us discuss issues as well and creating a peaceful environment to do so where basically the main rule is not to directly insult others.
Well, The Escapist didn't come out against Gamergate, officially or otherwise. The site took no official stance, and contributors had their own views individually.
That seems all we can ask when tensions are so high from the get-go.
No, we should be able to expect an article covering what's happening. It was a legitimate news story in gaming regardless of how anyone felt about the merits of it.
Them remaining silent on the matter is them being implicit (like everyone else) in exacerbating the Streisand effect. From sites over-modding content to everything else, it was a fairly fascinating story.
The problem is that without legitimate news, all we had were people like the Internet Aristocrat to go on and that knucklehead focused purely on Quinn when the main story should have been on the news agencies that allowed her to abuse them. I even explained this problem in my very first post in good ol' GG:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.858347-Zoe-Quinn-and-the-surrounding-controversy?page=14#21282642
"I would be interested in seeing a critical response on the subject. An article on what the criticism is, why any of this matters, stuff like that. Just something that sums it up and explains why it matters or why it doesn't.
Looks like information on the subject is getting redacted left and right so I'd appreciate an actual journalistic response detailing what's actually going on here rather than everyone being mum about it like it's beneath them to even acknowledge that there's a controversy afoot and to dispel the ignorance if it is such.
I don't mean the elements that are private and nitty gritty. I don't care who someone sleeps with. Just the elements that actually matter like criticisms of journalistic integrity and the claim that she fabricated attacks on herself and even got pro-feminist organizations trying to do charity work doxxed and pubicly shamed without any reasons as to why.
So it's not like everyone was being unreasonable. That was very early on.
Expecting the media to remain silent is not acceptable. Good people get hurt and innocent people get misled by those who do provide information that may or may not be true. They get to frame the discussion. In this event, the discussion was framed from the angle of a woman who cheated on a boyfriend rather than from the angle of a man who wrote articles for an intimate (Quinn herself admitted to having made out with him a week before second Grayson article was written) and for a game that he was actually credited as a tester in. The article should have been framed around a woman who abused her relationship (friendly, mind you, not sexual) with the media to falsely accuse groups of harassing her to market her game on greenlight. Instead it was framed by a slut shamer with a slight nod to media issues. Why? Because the slut shamer was the only one talking and there was actual merit to the facts being presented.
During that whole thing, articles were being presented for things that pertained to one side getting doxxed or hacked (like the whole Phil Fish event) but nothing happened when say a charity page got hacked because of the event by the other side.
I think after the Leigh Alexander gamers are dead article we saw the Escapist reel in shock and begin righting the ship right away realizing what was happening. Everything got better after that point, honestly.
But the staff here, like Tito, were still not friendly. When complaints were levied against them falsely accusing a group of harassing Quinn to promote her game the responses were like, "Of course we didn't fact check the claims, we're always going to default on the side of the victim". Clearly a one sided environment.
TFYC had a spat with Brianna Wu, and both sides had people supporting them/ criticising them. I haven't really seen one as an "in-group" any more than the other-- and certainly not on Escapist platforms. I don't even recall it coming up.
If anything, I've seen tonnes more criticism of Wu than TFYC.
Brianna Wu had a spat with TFYC? I was entirely unaware.
What I'm talking about is how TFYC went entirely uncovered and unsupported with the media because Quinn asked her friends not to report on them (suspicious since Quinn had a competing event planned). Journalists would schedule a meeting with TFYC and then back out of it after Quinn spoke with them. TFYC were astounded by this and reached out to the community when that happened. They faced all sorts of harassment and even had their site hacked during the campaign for a charitable women's game development competition. This should have easily checked all the boxes on anyone who had a specific agenda for women in gaming and yet this happened.
Brianna Wu was likely in a spat with them because they were finally funded by 4chan of all groups and people got mad because a charity took money from a group they didn't like. Which was funny to see unfold.
Still, I don't recall any of this making it into escapist news. Do you?
