circ dick soleil posted:

Gamergate is bad and full of people who call themselves things like "The Commissar of Gamergate". They make videos where they plan attack strategies and find ways to make people not say the things they are saying, or prevent games from getting made because they have the wrong message. I think this is wrong. Games should not be judged based on politics, they should be judged on gameplay. If a feminist game comes out and it's a good and fun game, then it is a good and fun game. If you're a game reviewer then you should give the game a good score based on its gameplay, and not give it a bad score because it's all about Andrea Dworkin or some other person whose opinions are not your own. Also price should be taken into consideration. If an otherwise okay game is free then that's really cool, because it's like free entertainment which is cool and everyone likes that. If the same okay game is priced at $60 then that sucks. Depression Quest was free which makes it cool. Even if you don't agree with the message and hate depressed people, it's still a game you can think about and think "I'm glad that game exists and it is free so if I feel like playing it I can, and if I don't feel like playing it I don't have to" so that is cool. Tale of Tales charged a lot of money for their games, and even had DLC. That is why they were bad. If all of their games were free then I would think they are good. Gamergate doesn't think so, and believes that even free games can be bad, which is not true (unless the games are computer viruses). Gamergate wants to stop the games and make it so there are less games, and no more free ones, when in fact the opposite should be true. There should be more games, especially the free ones, which are the best.

Clarste posted:

The incestuous relationship between the media the AAA game industry seems like a much bigger problem to me, given that the journalists are literally being paid to advertise games. And quite frankly, this is totally unavoidable because otherwise the developers would have zero motivation to do all the press releases and review copy stuff that lets game journalists have a job at all. The industry literally exists to be the marketing arm of AAA companies. Yet for some reason they're complaining about one random indie developer who got lucky. As if that somehow matters in the slightest.

Is Quinn even making money off that thing? Did whatever little coverage she got keep her afloat? Oh, apparently it's totally free and her ad earned her literally nothing. To say nothing of the fact that no-names getting popular is essentially random in any industry you care to look at.

circ dick soleil posted:

Depression Quest was a free game so it can only be good. The same is true for Dear Esther, when it was only a source mod. It was good because you could walk around and look at stuff, and it didn't cost you any money. When you were done looking at it you could uninstall it from your computer, and maybe reinstall it and play it again later. Another great source mod was Minerva. Saying that free games are bad is similar to fascism in many ways.

Furthermore I don't understand your connection between Gone Home and Sunset. They're both very different games.

NightVis posted:

I don't really think a lot of ancillary GG supporters or people on the fence are so much in favor of gamergate, it's more that the crowd gamergate tends to target are pretty godamn unsympathetic on the whole. Things are so polarized that people who curse themselves by paying half an ounce of attention to this are almost given a lovely choice where acknowledging t the "rain wet, sun will rise" fact that channers and MRAs are human garbage has to come with statements like "Revolution 60 was good" "Phil Fish is a good guy" and "Arthur Chu, helluva writer"

NightVis posted:

The art games deal is a "thing" largely because the gaming press can be overly solicitous towards it in a way that outsizes its actual interest among the consumers, which is a pretty big disconnect from the consumers of the products they're covering. I think a lot of the gaming journos covered in this shitstorm are generally just writing about games to get a byline, and would rather be doing some political blogging somewhere. When you got a disconnect (I'd even go as far as to say contempt) that hard between the audience and writers there's going to be some natural tension going both ways. If Ebert were covering some fresh film grad's 10 minute short, people would think it'd be out of place. Then again, Ebert actually wanted to be writing about movies.

NightVis posted:

That's a lot of what it came down to in my opinion. It wasn't so much that there was coverage of the art games or games that looked at social issues, it was more that they got ahead of themselves and didn't necessarily cover games, they covered gestures at games. Depression Quest and Tales of Tales games fit into that "hits all the right notes for this subset of the press, didn't bring anything to the table" box that people are getting irrationally angry at. It'd be fair to still call those games art, but they were bad art, and getting the level of promotion that a lot of small developers would give their right arm for does make the disconnect I've been talking about deeper. People naturally don't like shills. Someone telling you that (AAA release) is the greatest thing on the planet is grating enough. Seeing the gaming equivalent of a crust punk's garage band getting international press just makes the (already laughable) system look even more illegitimate.

NightVis posted:

and my counterpoint is that the silly artsy zero effort game got the creator an outsized level of exposure, although half of that is because said creator was running in a "scene" with a lot of the same people who'd end up writing about her project. Meanwhile, small devs are going out of business all over the place because they can't get eyeballs on their products. I don't subscribe at all to the "sex for reviews" slander but she was definitely running in a clique, and that kind of incestuous relationship between artists and the people who cover them is bad enough, add to the fact that she's really not created anything of technical or artistic merit and I can see why projects like hers have become a folk devil to a lot of people.

Cingulate posted:

No, the question was: on average, are the people who e.g. hate that blue-haired woman with the umlaut in her name more motivated by sexism, or by genuine concern regarding ethics in video game journalism, proportionally speaking?

circ dick soleil posted:

No but it would be cool to discuss them in a way that doesn't bring up Gamergate, and I'd be willing to wait until GG dies to do that.

Cardboard Box A posted:

This is a good point overall but your later assertion is wanting, depending on your "almost" qualifier.

I mean Revolution 60 has lovely Bratz-doll character models and PS2 era but rendered in HD graphics and can only be charitably described as anything more than mediocre in the low-bar mobile market (not so much on Steam where even among the greenlight masses it does not compare well at all) and Phil Fish can choke on the same dick he told people to choke on via Twitter and I've seriously never had to qualify those opinions ever.

Dapper Dan posted:

Games should be judged on its own merits, definitely. I mean, again, I'd love to play a feminist game. If it is good, obviously. Also, that was one of the major criticisms with Polygon. They started giving games lower scores because they felt they were sexist or didn't align with their views. Normally, who cares but when you take Metacritic into account, a lower score could mean less money for the development staff. This happened with Fallout: New Vegas. Obsidian developed it and their bonus was contingent upon a Metacritc score of 90.They got an 89 because they had to rush it out and it had some bugs at launch. They didn't get their bonus. Now contrast this with a good game with no bugs, but because the reviewer didn't agree or didn't like the content, they gave it a lower score. Which means less money for the development staff simply because someone disagreed with your ideas. This is a huge problem and one of the reasons scores need to be done away with altogether. Obviously, Metacritic score should not be tied to bonuses, but that's the unfortunate reality. When money is on the line and it could mean another game of that quality or not, people tend to get defensive.

Dapper Dan posted:

Some free games can be bad, some can be good. If I play a bad free game, I just shrug because I didn't have to pay money for it. I'm not going to crazy and yell about it because again, no money invested.

As for Sunset and Gone Home, they do have certain things in common and I just feel that Sunset was trying to ape the success of Gone Home which was a better game than Sunset was.

Dapper Dan posted:

Cardboard Box A posted:

This is a good point overall but your later assertion is wanting, depending on your "almost" qualifier.

I mean Revolution 60 has lovely Bratz-doll character models and PS2 era but rendered in HD graphics and can only be charitably described as anything more than mediocre in the low-bar mobile market (not so much on Steam where even among the greenlight masses it does not compare well at all) and Phil Fish can choke on the same dick he told people to choke on via Twitter and I've seriously never had to qualify those opinions ever.

Also Arthur Chu is a good writer, or at least he can be. He can even sometimes be a good guest.

quote:

I think in this case it's a pretty similar thing to how movie critics tend to prefer "indie" and "arthouse" films far more than the general audience because they've been watching so many movies. This is neither strange or unexpected.

Zombiejack posted:

To be fair "has a gay in it" is the only reason gone home even shows up on the radar.

Al Cowens posted:

This is all completely disregarding Asia, which for some strange reason is pigeonholed as white by identity politicians with an agenda.

I mean have you looked at those anime characters they look pretty white to me!! eh

Al Cowens posted:

Closest option. More specifically, Portland/SF/Toronto care crew should stop resorting to asinine tokenism, and condescendingly lecturing actual minorities and calling them house friend of the family uncle toms when they get fed up with their bullshit and having their very existence declared "problematic"

It's not white people, it's that kind of white 'people'

SedanChair posted:

What's my narrative then?

Cardboard Box A posted:

No it isn't and you know it. It could have lesbians making out on top of a rainbow flag emblazoned with JUNE 26 on it and even then that wouldn't be the only reason it shows up on the radar.

I mean it's basically "Only 90s kids will get this" The Game filled with references to The X Files and Street Fighter 2 and Riotgrrl Punk Bands and guess who's right in that age group?

SedanChair posted:

But pushing that agenda is 100% good. It doesn't matter if gamers want to see those messages or not, they should be forced to see them, because they are barbarians and need wise, civilizing women academics to restructure their minds to comply with feminism. Everyone should comply with the expectations of feminism.

Cardboard Box A posted:

So are those who unironically posted this message on the chans and the twittersphere going to support Offworld? Oh you don't say....

circ dick soleil posted:

My prediction is that they're going to confuse SPJ with skeleton (one of their trigger words) and it's going to screw the whole thing up, with gamergaters yelling hysterically at the journalists and calling them hamplanets.

Unfunny Poster posted:

I don't think his initial involvement was anything nefarious, but more so "hey remember the Jeff Gertsman thing? You should probably avoid that sort of poo poo happening again."

I do agree with his initial "if Zoe issued a DMCA on a video, it's kind of an abuse of the YouTube DMCA system as the video had no copyright infringement."

He did an hour long discussion with Stephen Totilo (Editor in Chief of Kotaku) on the whole thing, and with Rhianna Pratchett (video game story writer who did the recent Tomb Raider games and some other stuff) on representation in games.

They're nothing groundbreaking but his overall goal was "let's actually have a discussion like civil adults and not call each other names on Twitter", which seems to have worked in some capacity.

Links:

Totillo discussion - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpmIrWqEUUU
Prathcett discussion - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJUHm9v6uOQ

NightVis posted:

I've always felt that Chu tries to speak in too many online left shibboleths to be appealing. He's trying to give his hot take a lot of the time but comes across like docevil that one time on attack of the show. I talked with someone recently (who's not aware of any of this trashfire) who read his recent Slate piece on shootings. She felt the same way I did, that he was making a decent point, but it was almost like his was writing to impress that small subset of the internet left in the process, which really detracted from what he was doing. He's really playing the game for points and it's pretty distasteful.

NightVis posted:

I'd be with you on that first point about art house films with cases like the support for Gone Home. The example I gave earlier about what if Roger Ebert was covering a fresh grad's 10 minute short is a bit closer to what I was getting at in that respect.

I'm entirely with you on the devs going completely insane.

Zombiejack posted:

I don't think nostalgia alone would have fueled the critical acclaim it got, the 'insightful' social commentary was certainly what propelled into the public eye. Not in the least because of the gaming press' desperate desire to be taken seriously.
playing it remind me of my own coming out in that it was tedious, awkward and provided some opportunities for passive aggressive homophobia from people I don't care about and simpering hand holding from other people I don't care about.

Cardboard Box A posted:

I'm not even sure what this means? Did you think he should have called for gun control more? Or pointed out how similar Roof sounded to the Stormfront-Reddit-/pol/ axis?

Well the thing is if his major weekly review for the Chicago Sun-Times was a free 10 minute short film on Youtube that would be weird, sure. But he had a blog and he was on twitter and he mentioned lots of small things and short films and even non-movie stuff (like introducing rice cookers to white people) because he was a writer with a lot of time. I think that can be considered comparable to videogame blogsites giving mention to some steam greenlight indie games.

Cool.

murphyslaw posted:

Yeah that game looks wretched. I mean, where's the loving chin? Is that a nose-snout? drat.

Still, Wu's not a valid target for harassment even if she might be some kind of idiot (neither is anyone).

Cliff Racer posted:

No but she is a good one for Doobie-style mockery or ALoD type page bombing. I mean look at that thing, its wretched. First of all, its not desexualized at all (despite not being sexy in the least its still very clearly wearing some sort of gimp suit and might well have come off sexy if not done in an incredibly unappealing art style) and I honestly can't tell which of the two pictures is the before and which is the after. Like we were told there was improvement but I can't find any.

Clarste posted:

Indie games are made by small teams of unproven creators, and most of them suck. There's been some effort to promote them lately because some people think indie games are a nifty idea. Sometimes they don't suck, and that's pretty cool.

The vast bulk of industry journalism is still retweeting whatever morsels of information the AAA companies deign to feed us. The primary purpose of this is to generate pre-release hype and encourage preorders before the reviews come in. This isn't a problem at all.

Dapper Dan posted:

Games should be judged on its own merits, definitely. I mean, again, I'd love to play a feminist game. If it is good, obviously. Also, that was one of the major criticisms with Polygon. They started giving games lower scores because they felt they were sexist or didn't align with their views. Normally, who cares but when you take Metacritic into account, a lower score could mean less money for the development staff. This happened with Fallout: New Vegas. Obsidian developed it and their bonus was contingent upon a Metacritc score of 90.They got an 89 because they had to rush it out and it had some bugs at launch. They didn't get their bonus. Now contrast this with a good game with no bugs, but because the reviewer didn't agree or didn't like the content, they gave it a lower score. Which means less money for the development staff simply because someone disagreed with your ideas. This is a huge problem and one of the reasons scores need to be done away with altogether. Obviously, Metacritic score should not be tied to bonuses, but that's the unfortunate reality. When money is on the line and it could mean another game of that quality or not, people tend to get defensive.

NightVis posted:

The impression the person I mentioned got was that he wrapped salient points in some chunks of rhetoric that made him sound like a twitter madposter.

I'm in disagreement about the DQ coverage. I feel like it's often minimized for the sake of combatting GG's narrative while sacrificing some accuracy. There were features on semimajor publications and it did get top billing in some of those Greenlight roundups. But again, I think it's more a case of unprofessional conduct by people giving their friends a boost than some far-reaching conspiracy. It just has worse optics because of the lack of merit the project itself held.

afeelgoodpoop posted:

She glassed a trans person, she sexually harassed someone and the indie clique, including phil phish, pressure him into groveling. She pushes skeleton agendas in videogames and in real life with her clique friends that she constantly violates and could never live up to. Ofcourse hypocrisy by itself didn't warrant this shitstorm however the mass bannings, journalist attacking anyone calling them out for pushing her stuff, being found out as having this weird nepotistic group of indie developers doing mafioso style favor trading for press, did. the progressive gamer agenda is both comically large and stupid, and it is good that there is now a group to push back against them.

afeelgoodpoop posted:

"A harassment campaign" of trying to find out the whos and whys this terrible person is being empowered. Oh she's being puffed up by game journalist we always hated that pushed BS social issues? And she hosed them? (lol)

I hope you realize that's what these people who call it a harassment campaign are talking about. digging up info and sometimes laughing over it.

afeelgoodpoop posted:

Do you follow videogame journalism at all? for the past 5 years there have been these coordinated pushes on social media combined with journalist articles calling out game developers over social issues stuff. It's mostly feminist issues, since alot of the meat and ideas of what to push come from feminist games academics, but their was racial stuff too. the last ones I remember before gamergate started was the push for female playable characters in assassins creed and another complaining about the lack of black people in kingdom come deliverance. The developer of that game become a pretty big gamergate supporter and I think I know why.

afeelgoodpoop posted:

I am legit disgusted with the goings on of chris chan, but personally if an anonymous collective digs stuff up about you as part of an investigation with a goal in mind, aka connect journalists and friends to collusive corrupt business practices, I feel it is quite forgivable.

afeelgoodpoop posted:

It is a coordinated effort by feminist and a like minded minority group pushing for it. the vast majority of gamers dont want tokenism, and the tricks that social media skeletons use to make them appear bigger than they are deserves to be called out.

But yes I'd like more variety in gaming aswell.

afeelgoodpoop posted:

Here's a summary of a meeting between some feminist games academics and some journalist. Their is a video you can watch for personal confirmation this happened. http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/31fio8/happenings_this_is_the_smoking_gun_8ch_summary/cq19u4q

TL:DR feminist games academics talking about using social engineering to try to push their agendas into as many games as possible.

afeelgoodpoop posted:

The most important thing to take away from it is they talk about using "devious" tactics. like fake controversys, slandering everyone who plays games in an attempt to curb whatever it's slandering it over. Real Soviet style poo poo.

Let us English posted:

The purpose is the generate clicks. That clicks and preorders correspond is incidental and journalists don't give a gently caress.

NightVis posted:

I think there's really two gaming presses in that aspect. If we're talking about stuff like IGN or Gamespot, then Clarste is entirely on point. Outlets like Kotaku/Polygon run clickbait.

murphyslaw posted:

I mean sure if you want but where's the hilarious trainwreck making it worthwhile? If it's just a bunch of wheezing retards cataloguing her every move ala chris chan back in the day, it's just saddos stalking some weirdo. Which is sad and terrible. Don't touch the poop is what i'm saying, unless you want to smell bad with all that poop on your hands.

Cardboard Box A posted:

I'm still not sure exactly what rhetoric makes him sound like a twitter madposter or that he's tweeting (I guess?) in his Roof reaction article. He didn't use any rhetoric (that time) that would make him sound like a videogame madposter ("pull aggro") either as far as I could tell.

I think it's minimized when discussing the gamergate narrative specifically because the gamergate allegation was about Grayson and it turned out he mentioned it in a Steam Greenlight roundup and oh he talked about Zoe in some game jam coverage too. Like DQ could have been mentioned at least once on a dozen more videogame blogsites including a bunch that almost no one reads except our theoretical gamergater and that's why they have the impression it has outsized coverage? Yeah sure, absolutely.

Let us English posted:

No he's not. I worked at IGN and was a journalist for five years.

Clarste posted:

The incestuous relationship between the media the AAA game industry seems like a much bigger problem to me, given that the journalists are literally being paid to advertise games. And quite frankly, this is totally unavoidable because otherwise the developers would have zero motivation to do all the press releases and review copy stuff that lets game journalists have a job at all. The industry literally exists to be the marketing arm of AAA companies. Yet for some reason they're complaining about one random indie developer who got lucky. As if that somehow matters in the slightest.

Is Quinn even making money off that thing? Did whatever little coverage she got keep her afloat? Oh, apparently it's totally free and her ad earned her literally nothing. To say nothing of the fact that no-names getting popular is essentially random in any industry you care to look at.

Exclamation Marx posted:

Private companies are allowed to make decisions based on consumer feedback. That isn't a freedom of speech issue.

NightVis posted:

Going again over the article, the only real shibboleth I saw was "toxic masculinity" used in the preface, which has at least in a lot of circles become a term synonymous with Macintosh.The person I mentioned didn't really go over anything specific in the article, but did feel that the overall tone sounded more like a social media rant than a well-crafted opinion piece for a national publication, even though much of what he was saying was correct, which I suppose boils down to a stylistic critique. I think his general tone and style feel crafted to hit a specific "personal brand" for social media, which is a bit of an unfortunate trend these days.

So if opposing gamergate means minimizing the coverage level, and supporting gamergate means blowing it way, way out of proportion, where does "Okay that was definitely a bit much but come the gently caress on you idiots" sit?

Obdicut posted:

So a tone argument?

Ddraig posted:

I always love the links Shadoer posts about how political correctness has gone made. Like how Black Students who, upon seeing very prominent KKK imagery in a campus, are somewhat disturbed by it. This is a complete moral failure on their part, of course, since black people don't constantly have to live in fear anymore: This is 2015 and crazy white people have stopped committing racially motivated violence against black people.

NightVis posted:

I'm not saying someone doesn't have a point or shouldn't be listened to because they're snippy about it, so, uh, no?

Totalizator posted:

Banning symbols because people are offended by them has always worked and never, ever backfired.

Obdicut posted:

You're saying he said true things but said them in the wrong tone, right?

NightVis posted:

Going again over the article, the only real shibboleth I saw was "toxic masculinity" used in the preface, which has at least in a lot of circles become a term synonymous with Macintosh.The person I mentioned didn't really go over anything specific in the article, but did feel that the overall tone sounded more like a social media rant than a well-crafted opinion piece for a national publication, even though much of what he was saying was correct, which I suppose boils down to a stylistic critique. I think his general tone and style feel crafted to hit a specific "personal brand" for social media, which is a bit of an unfortunate trend these days.

NightVis posted:

So if opposing gamergate means minimizing the coverage level, and supporting gamergate means blowing it way, way out of proportion, where does "Okay that was definitely a bit much but come the gently caress on you idiots" sit?

H.R. Hufflepuff posted:

Yes, because those people have such a healthy relationship with Leigh Alexander they would want to see her newest venture succeed. Don't play dumb.

Cardboard Box A posted:

This comes up a lot but "toxic masculinity" is an academic term that is understandably getting brought up even in non-academic discussions of spree shooters, thanks in part to Anita. Folding ideas made a short video that explains it better in layman's terms:

http://blip.tv/foldablehuman/s4e8-fight-club-7105117

Anyway, it's definitely a 1) hastily-assembled thinkpiece in the wake of a big news national event and 2) Salon dot com post Greenwald. No surprise that something like his disco piece for TheDailyBeast (of all places) that had more time to cook was much better written.

Also I've seen lots of tweets strung together in a storify, including his, and the Salon piece wasn't that choppy.

It's still opposing gamergate? I mean you don't have to take things to extremes.

Obdicut posted:

Nah, but it's been useful in a lot of cases, because it shows mainstream societal disapproval, rather than endorsement, of those symbols.

NightVis posted:

which makes him a hacky writer, but not incorrect.

quote:

I disagree with you on the "taking things to extremes" side though. From my experience online and off, more often than not you're forced to "pick a side" whole cloth. In this example either DQ was simply mentioned in a list, or they had full banners all over Kotaku. Neither of these are accurate but somewhere within the tribalism this has generated there really isn't much room for accuracy.

Totalizator posted:

Banning symbols because people are offended by them has always worked and never, ever backfired. I mean, just two days ago we finally succeeded in ending racism because now that the racist flag is banned people have stopped being racist, and not at all became more radicalized and insular in their racism. I mean look at europe: nazi imagery is banned in many countries and these countries have no problem with neo-nazis whatsoever (suing them when caught is totally working) and the right wing in places like hungary totally isn't facist now that they can't use the swastika.

I mean I could say that curbing the free speech of your political opponents just makes you look like a repressive shithead and the behavioral conditioning the neo puritans believe in has little to no scietific backing but that'd be just complete nonsense, am I right?

Obdicut posted:

And so what, I guess is my point? Like, you're massively misusing the word 'shibboleth', does that mean you're a hacky writer?

Totalizator posted:

This bizarre insistence that social conditioning works is completely contradictory to how the entire human history went down. If it was true, the social revolution of the 60's would never happen (because people were conditioned in the puritan 50's)

Totalizator posted:

What mainstream society approves or disapproves of changes over time. At this point in time banning symbol works in our favor because mainstream society has become tolerant of LGBT, feminist and progressive causes.

quote:

Russia however thinks the same way you do and recently legislated a ban of homosexual symbolism because of mainstream societal disapproval, which is definitely a real thing there (I live in Poland and let me tell you how many times the rainbow in Warsaw was burned down by nationalists because they consider it a LGBT symbol and disapprove of it). Now you can say that now that America largely embraced Correct Opinions it's time to set them in stone and purge everyone left who doesn't like them from social discourse, but keep in mind nothing is forever, and if conservatives are ever back in full swing you won't even have free speech to fall back on.

quote:

This bizarre insistence that social conditioning works is completely contradictory to how the entire human history went down. If it was true, the social revolution of the 60's would never happen (because people were conditioned in the puritan 50's), the victorian era would never end and feminism wouldn't even be a thing, after all overcoming two thousand years of christian conditioning would be freaking IMPOSSIBLE.

quote:

This idiotic belief that people who disagree with your view are a mass of barbarians who need to have your views forced upon them, rather then human beings who simply disagree with some or all of your opinions based on their experiences, knowledge or personal taste is going to be the downfall of the left. People have the right to tell you to gently caress off and you have the right to say they're idiots for it, but you don't have the right to force your views upon them, just like they don't have the right to force your views upon you.

NightVis posted:

Yeah, but I'm not trying to make a living as a writer.

Ddraig posted:

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the incidences of genocide and crimes against humanity in Germany has massively declined ever since the Nazi party was made illegal. The two may not be linked, but if we're going on pure statistics and not gut instinct then I can categorically state that there has been a statistically significant decline in the number of Jewish, Homosexual, Gypsy, Disabled and other minority people being systemically murdered since the ban went into effect.

Obdicut posted:

0
Okay, do you get that writing almost incomprehensible posts criticizing writing can get a little meta?

I seriously can't tell what point you've been trying to make, at all. I've read your posts with an open mind and I have no clue what you are trying to say. Could you perhaps restate it as clearly as you can?