Never been into gaming that much... asked mommy and daddy for nintendos, ataris and whatnot for b-days and Cristmas when younger, but playing them for more than a couple O months afterwards is longest I really ever got into things. .. well, smoking weed like crazy during highschool and college did resort to massive amounts of time playing "Bond" and Mariokart in multiplayer... but that doesn't count.

Much news has arisen lately concerning this Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn (who'd I would not only drink, but inject her bathwater : ))... and thus... "hashfag" gamergate.

Seems to originally have been about a sketchy relationship between game devs and "journalists", then I have also read that it is also a movement against "politically correct"-style social engineering via games, which somehow is connected to U.S. government initiatives.

Yet, the movement was eventually hi-jacked by trolls and hence (the biggest interest too me), some Youtube-twat that calls himself "Jace Connor", and has a channel called parkourdude91.
This guy is the absolute EPITOME in terms of the kind of excrement that results from 200+ years of American capitalism, Cristianity, combined with heavy gaming and Mountain Dew.

But, that's the impression I've gotten so far from gamergate... any of you guys know the truth regarding what it is/was really about?

And are Brianna Wu, Zoe Quinn and this Sarkeesian chick straight c:/nts??

what is the truth?

 

I (for one) don't give a shit. I just design/record sounds for games.

Edit: fact: 52% of the gamers are women.

 

I'm really glad that I was born too early to have my adolescence and early adulthood cut off at the knees by video games and "gamer" culture. The layers of the mentality formed around this culture get more and more ridiculous and unrealistic as they extenuate outward, and the impersonality of the Internet (a corruption of what Net Neutrality is good for) is there to compound irresponsible and uncivil mindsets. Add to this that there's The Feminist putting spin on it - more of that crap, that's been around for too long and, ironically, served to emasculate men from boyhood on up, just like video games have.

And speaking of old ideas, what's with the "-gate" suffix, borrowed/left over from "Watergate," which occurred a good four decades ago and is as outmoded and dated as the idea of feminism (which, despite getting a makeover ever decade or so, is still there mainly to mess with people's heads on the basic level of their sexuality, and to confuse society on the basis of gender roles and politics)?

I'm not some "old guy" out of touch with more youthly culture, I'm someone who's been eyes-open aware since the age of nine or so, watching people in our society, and our society as a whole, be messed-with constantly by the Media (which has come to include video games and the Internet). Where They get you with a media event such as this is to talk about it in terms of "it," in the terms presented, within the paradigm prescribed by the publicity - rather than looking at it for what it is in a larger picture of the continuum of public manipulation.

 

I'm also a bit baffled by it, my latest info was that it was caused by some woman who gave a game a bad review somewhere?

 

The way I see it, there are two things going on with 'gamergate'. The normal-media (tv and such) focusing only on one of it. This is all by my own interpretation, don't blindly accept it as truth, be a grownup etcetc... Now, here it is:

One female indy (independent / small scale) game developer got a bit of publicity because 'word got out' that she cheated on her boyfriend (who made it public I believe). So far, nothing that special.
One person / reporter took notice of the fact that 'the boyfriend' who was cheated on, was actually a game journalist for a few somewhat well known game-news sites. He raised the question about a developer and game journalist having a relationship (well, not anymore) was not really that ethical and there might be doubts that the articles he wrote about 'her' games might be biased now.
Now here the fun starts already a bit, but first I gotta explain one thing more: At this point it became clear that she (the female developer) actually cheated on her boyfriend with another game journalist... hmm. Then some other guys spoke up that they too had at least some sort of sexual encounter / relationship with the female developer.. all working for game journalist sites or in someway working in the game business (handling of votes for campaigns, indy-game-funding etc..).
Suspicious, right?

Right, from here on the 'gamergate' thing forks out into two directions, with the (normal) media focusing primarily on one.
Since a lot of discussion and bantering back and forth between the parties involved so far was quite publicly on forums / twitter etc a lot of people got hold of it and saw it folding out. The general consensus here was that 'the female developer' was quite a bad person for what she did, not only the cheating but also quite clearly trying to use sexuality to get ahead in articles / votes / campaigns (nothing proving as far as I know, but c'mon..). People started responding on the public tweets. And as is (unfortunately) common these days on the internet, if people start ranting or responding (specially younger users of the internet) the anonymity makes them behave as if they can say anything they want. So, the tweets back at 'her' started to get more and more hateful, physical, dangerous etc... I can't condone this of course, but this behaviour is not only to gamers. All kinds of trolls and young people on the internet say the most hateful things like dead threats and racial slur 'because they can'. This is no different.
Other game developers took notice of the avalanche of hate towards 'her', and started to stand up to 'her' because a lot of the hate was based on her being female. This started the whole thing that the whole game industry stood up for females-working-in-the-games-business and that all the hate was stupid, etc.. The media started hyping this up as well.
Note that this all kinda forgets how this all happened... she cheated, with multiple partners, to get herself ahead, so I can see where the hate was coming from (of course it's not right, don't get me wrong). But all the people 'standing up' for her kinda forgot how this game to be, and just focused on the 'a woman in games is being bullied for being a woman'.
In my opinion, she was being bullied for being a bad person / bad woman. Just saying. This doens't justify the shitstorm of hate she got, but the whole games industry and the media misinterpreted the start of this all.

Now, like I said, there were two 'forks' of things going on with GamerGate. This was just one, and the most public.
The other thing, is that some journalists and users started questioning big gaming sites like Kotaku (and others) about articles being written by people that at one time had a relationship with 'her'. So far, nothing that special about it. What fires this 'issue' was the response they got in return: The issue was plainly denied or just ignored, questions weren't answered directly. So if people push more and more about 'hey, that review was done by the boyfriend of the developer, can you say that that didn't influence the article' the gaming sites started to defend the journalists and saying that people should just leave it alone.
Then more was dug up: More journalists who had a personal relationship with some other developers (About the articles they wrote) were brought to light and put in the same question: Can you guarantee that that didn't influence the stuff they wrote about? Some sites responded and got prove that at the time articles were written there wasn't a relationship, some other sites removed the articles in question... but primarily the big ones (Kotaku, Joystick, Gamespot) just didn't answer and interpreted the questions as 'hate'.

That fired of a whole 'wave' of gamers questioning the ethics in the gaming-journalist-world. Journalists being able to review games by going on a all-expenses-paid-weekend-trip to play the game were questioned. All the people in the gaming business seemingly knowing each other was being questioned, etc..

In the end this didn't get as much attention, but it has caused that a lot of sites now openly tell about what they got from a game developer in return for the review, and that gaming sites won't review a (multiplayer online) game before the game has actually launched and it the played it for a week (you can't judge a game in playing it for 8 hours in a weekend when the rest of the world isn't playing it online). Eurogamer for instance now paying for their own accommodation and travel to a 'review event', even if is offered that the developer pays for it, etc...

I don't wanna go al 'conspiracy theory' here, but I do find it a shame that the whole media focused on the avalanche of hate tweets and that 'the female developer' kinda game out of this a hero and a victim.. while the whole journalist-ethics thing was kinda swept under the rug and people forgot how this all started: 'she' did some clearly wrong things and is a bad person. She just manages to always come out as a victim.

People digging further found other questionable things about 'her': She was to be in a television series about indy-game-development with some other well known small-scale developers. That television show was eventually cancelled, and it now kinda was brought to light that the show was cancelled because 'she' was behaving so badly that it was impossible to work with. She then started a 'fundraiser' to make another TV show according to her own ways. That fundraiser is still going on somewhere.. the 'donation' link is a link directly to her own personal Paypal account. When asked to specify how the financials were going for the fundraiser she ignored the questions, sparking further debate over the fact that she might just run with the money or not.

Another woman came forward in having worked with her in the past, and revealed that 'she' did some horrible things (sharing pictures, 'doxing' the other woman, hate tweets of herself).

And there is an old offshoot forum from 4Chan that focuses on all things Disney and related to Disney movies. Imagine it, a fan-forum for Disney related things. How peaceful must it be. Well, that forum wants _nothing_ to do with the female developer anymore and banned her (this is years before the whole gamergate thing started). Being banned by a Disney-fan-forum.. what did she do to accomplish that??

So clearly, 'the female developer' is not a saint and sounds to me like a very very evil person (which has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman or not).. yet the whole thing blew up and people lost sight of what originally started all this.
Hundred-thousands of angry, violent hate-tweets is not a thing that can be right... EVER.. so I'm not saying she 'deserves' it, because no one deserves that, and it is a clear sign of what is wrong with the social behaviour on the internet these days (gamers or not).. but she did do some awful things to get all this going.. she just came out looking like a victim once again.


As a closing statement I repeat my disclaimer again: DO not blindly interpret everything I type as truth, I only read it on the internet myself. And while I don't take everything for granted and only 'believe' things after I saw some things that make me actually believe it, I can be wrong as well. And it's very easy to start lies and make them go viral on the internet, so once again: I do believe what I typed myself, but I might be wrong of course!

 

Excellent analysis and writing !

 

I also heard, what you somehow failed to mention, that this Zoe Quinn's game is really crappy. *yes*

 

Most excellent points, my brother.

 

brianna wu said it was 49% on NPR other day... but either way, obviously a huge-ass chunk of the market nevrtheless.

@dipje: that's what I thought... Zoe Quinn right?.. yep.

 

There is a Wikipedia article about this topic. Basically it's kinda about why Princess Peach (a woman) is the damsel in distress and Super Mario (a man) has to rescue her, when obviously it should be the other way round...

A bunch of freaks getting bored I guess.

 

Hello guys. I saw your post looking for any more news about #gamergate this afternoon and decided to sign up and help answer any questions you might have.

Gamergate is NOT about sexism in the gaming industry. That narrative was adopted to protect unethical journalist and judges who were sleeping with developers and in turn providing them with good press, name recognition in the gaming circles and awards. This all came to light (something we have suspected for years) and the gaming press colluded together to squash the story and redirect what this was really about.

-We now know a good deal of how deep the corruption went, including the editors and journalists from most of the top gaming sites coordinating together on secret forums.

Its deeper than this- WAAAAAY deeper. However, I just wanted a small post to outline what really started all of this and why it should matter to all of you- Now the main Stream media is also reporting the lies because their practices are similar and they are protecting their own. Any of the journalists on the MSM who have reported this have flat out lied and a simple google search will prove this.

We LOVE girl gamers and there are Women develpoers who are icons in the industry - These "professional victims" are NOT respected but gender has nothing to do with the reason why. The ONLY reason gender is now "the issue" is because they (i.e. Anti GG) made it this way to redirect what this is really about- And many are buying it.

I will be happy to provide any links or answer any questions... Just trying not to write a wall of text if its not something you really care to know about.

 

Hmmm- 24 hours and not approved? I suppose that means I am not going to be permitted to post here about this subject.

Thanks anyhow. Good day.

 

Sorry for the delay. We actually approve practically any subject so long as it adheres to our simple rules. You won't find many forums with the level of freedom that we enjoy here. The reason is that we're a little short-staffed at the moment since one of our mods is caught up in real life stuff and I am juggling a million things at once. Also approvals are only needed for your first 5 posts so rest assured soon it won't affect you at all.