Zontar said:
They aren't coming for out games, they said. No one's trying to censor anything, they said. Man this was upsetting, not for the fact that a company I hate caved in, but because this sets a precedent, and a particularly bad one at that.
As I put it in another thread talking about this:
To paraphrase Stewie from Family Guy: And it's not so much that we want to take your games away, it's just, we want them to not be there anymore.
Zhukov said:
It still amuses me to see Gamergaters getting pissed off by this.
"We use letter writing campaigns to influence the actions of news outlets hardly any of us frequented but which offended us with their sensibilities?"
"Whoo, yeah! Consumer power baby! I am Gamer, hear me type!"
"A bunch of busybody think-of-the-children types used a letter writing campaign to influence the actions of a business stocking a product hardly any of them were going to buy but which offended their sensibilities?"
"WHOA! Whoa. Can of worms, man! Dangerous precedent right there! Why, it's practically censorship! Domestic terrorism even!"
I like to look at it this way:
GamerGate made a boycott list of media outlets on the basis of undisclosed conflicts of interest, other evident violations of journalistic ethics, one sided reporting and the whole "gamers are dead" thing, individually or in various combinations. Remember, reviewing the products of a person you live with without even disclosing that (to use Hernandez as an example) is the same thing as hurting someone's feels. It's not like there are ethical rules connected to journalism as a field that say certain things are inappropriate or anything...
Anti GamerGate made a boycott list of developers on the basis of not agreeing with them and engaging in doubleplus-ungood unPartythink. They also made a twitter blocklist that seems to be likewise composed of people who engage in unPartythink and anyone who follows them on Twitter. If the twitter blocklist is supposed to target "the worst harassers", then the people behind it are incompetent, but then we live in an age where inviting someone for an interview is harassment, so who knows?
IceForce said:
People are seriously making comparisons with CoD?
It would seem there are too many people in this thread who can't tell the difference between:
- Killing a scantly-clad unarmed female prostitute moments after having sex with her.
- Killing a fully-clothed, fully-armed, fully-armored male enemy combatant before he kills you first.
Because these two things are completely comparable. /sarcasm
How about comparing to killing literally any civilian or LEO, armed or not? Because that's what you can do in GTA titles. The Anita argument where that kind of violence isn't problematic unless female NPCs are treated like male NPCs (at which point it becomes a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal and violence, but only when the target is female) is ridiculous.
Zontar said:
As for the company which reversed their stance, the only one I'm aware such a claim being made is Adobe, and that was because people misrepresented a statement of their condemning harassment as them reversing their stance despite still dropping their ads and the statement not actually supporting Anti due to there being more harassment from Anti then anyone save for trolls.
Intel. Megaphone-chan posted about Intel returning ads to Gamasutra a while back. It's unclear if they returned advertising to Gamasutra or if some advertising services that Intel is using are on Gamasutra (most of the images used as evidence of Intel's return clearly have an AdChoice logo on the ad).
As for "support", AGG tends to take anyone saying they don't support harassment or that they do support women in gaming as saying they don't support GG. Which is funny given the amount of harassment that has come from AGG, including driving one woman off twitter and another to quit her job in gaming. The reality is that there are probably more pro-GG devs than anyone thinks, but many are just keeping their heads down because they need the press if they want to keep their jobs. I honestly hope one of them reads that "Welcome to #GamerGate, Zoe Quinn" article written recently as a demonstration of why that's a silly thing to do.
Zontar said:
Sweet. I expect to see them show up on the equivalent of the SLPC then. Oh, right, that didn't happen.
I have no idea what that acronym means honestly, but I have a feeling it's something stupid that isn't on par with GamerGhazi. Namely because I'd have herd an anti use it before now.
He means SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group known for tracking hate groups and the like. They used to be a major resource tapped by the FBI regarding the topic, but they've fallen into comparative disfavor in recent years. They've done some fantastic work in the past, but less so in recent years, in part because some of their leadership has taken the vaguely SJW-like tendency to associate disagreeing with certain political views with being a hate group (hint: it takes a lot more to be covered by SPLC if you are, or appear to be, left wing -- which is why the notable amount of AGGro harassment and doxxing aren't worth mentioning to them, as too many have painted it as a left v right battle).
I haven't read what they wrote about GG, but I expect they probably swallowed the media narrative whole cloth and declared GG to be an anti-woman hate movement based entirely on slut-shaming.