Gamergate

[CNS]

You've got it backwards. It started with immature misogynists, then tried to cover it up by becoming a movement for ethics in gaming journalism. The whole origin of Gamergate is right there in that link I posted in my first post.

[manofonetitle]

(02-22-2016, 09:31 PM)CNS Wrote: You've got it backwards. It started with immature misogynists, then tried to cover it up by becoming a movement for ethics in gaming journalism. The whole origin of Gamergate is right there in that link I posted in my first post.

I read the article, but the thing is I don't really trust it as a source of truth on the matter because gamergate stirred up a lot of shit with Kotaku (a Gawker property) since one of the writers for Kotaku was one of the guys Quinn was accused of sleeping with, so that article seems really biased to me. Especially since that article was written during the time when gamergate was becoming a big new thing so there might have been a lot of bitterness towards it.
Though there was a part in that article that I found interesting: "Many #Gamergate participants truly believe that they are fighting an important fight against corruption in game journalism. But to an outside observer, it's bizarre that they identify the greatest threat as the small, independent, crowdfunded developers, and not the huge profitable game companies that advertise on game sites." I feel like this ties into what you said earlier about the Shadow of Mordor controversy, no? Well, there were some people who called Warner Bros. out on it, but it wound up not being that big a deal because 1) a lot of people were satisfied with the game and 2)it didn't have much to do with censorship or making a specific game politically correct, nor were there specific individuals getting hate mail and death threats over it. Stories like that are hot-button issues that have a much easier time getting swooped up by the media. There was an article about the shadow of mordor thing here:
http://garrettbrobinson.com/a-response-t...of-mordor/

I'm not defending the people that made those death threats to the women trying to make a living in the game industry, but lumping everyone that subscribes to gamergate seems like a fallacy of division to me. It's like saying that every feminist out there thirsts for men's blood and wants every woman to have a collection of chopped off dicks in a jar or something. There are definitely overzealous examples of this, but it's unfair to label the entire movement as people who think that way. Problem is that feminists and gamergaters are like sworn enemies now so the shitstorm is raining heavy between those two groups. I try to be all ears for both sides of each argument though.

For the sake of illustrating my point on how I thought gamergate came about, here's some other articles/posts, one talking about the origin of gamergate and another presenting feedback after a year of the controversy starting:
https://medium.com/@cainejw/factual-orig....jpqzijsvl
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/...in-review/

[CNS]

I see you're still not getting the point. The point being that it all started with a guy so upset that his girlfriend broke up with him, that he decided to ruin her life. That's where it started and no amount if whitewashing is going to clear that up. The doxxing and death threats were part of what made the movement what it was originally and the "ethics in games journalism" was a happy accident they took upon to justify the continuation of their hateful rhetoric. The problem is the mixed messaging, as some people only saw the ethics part of the movement and agreed with it. That doesn't make those people misogynists or hateful, but they did inadvertently support the initial ideals of the movement.

The smartest thing that can be done for those individuals who are truly concerned about ethics is to distance themselves from the Gamergate name all together. Even if it's benign now, it's sordid history of rampant misogyny will forever taint it's name. Start fresh with the same ideals and no one would be upset over it.

[manofonetitle]

(02-23-2016, 01:55 AM)CNS Wrote: I see you're still not getting the point. The point being that it all started with a guy so upset that his girlfriend broke up with him, that he decided to ruin her life. That's where it started and no amount if whitewashing is going to clear that up. The doxxing and death threats were part of what made the movement what it was originally and the "ethics in games journalism" was a happy accident they took upon to justify the continuation of their hateful rhetoric. The problem is the mixed messaging, as some people only saw the ethics part of the movement and agreed with it. That doesn't make those people misogynists or hateful, but they did inadvertently support the initial ideals of the movement.

Ok, 1)That guy that was 'so upset his girlfriend broke up with him' didn't intend to 'ruin her life'. He updated the original blog post when Quinn started getting harassed to tell people to stop doing that and was dead serious. According to him, the whole point of it was to warn people about how convincingly manipulative she was with him and people she worked with (original blog post here: https://thezoepost.wordpress.com/ )
and 2)I guess I'm not 'still getting the point' because I've been trying to look at it with a skeptic mindset, and I'm not even 100 percent sure who to believe. You said earlier that my refresher on the issue is exactly what gamergate wants me to believe, but all that I typed on that refresher was just my recollection of what the story was about from what I gathered in the past (I'll admit I did kind of a sloppy job but I wasn't sure if a discussion about it would happen). That being said, it feels like your take on it is exactly what anti-gamergate wants you to believe. Why do I say this? Because your whole point is the same point which everyone that writes an article condemning gamergate repeatedly says, which is the part about the women being harassed and doxxed. I'm skeptic about that because looking into it, some of those harassment claims by the female victims are questionable. An example would be how Zoe Quinn claimed that a forum called Wizardchan harassed her, supplied no proof of it, and in turn got people to give them shit. More details are explained here:
http://imgur.com/a/4VOcx
And that's not the only thing that Quinn did that was questionable, another thing she did was criticize a indiegogo movement called "The Fine Young Capitalists" that was intended to hire female writers who had never worked on a game to work on one, and the proceeds would go to the contest, the contestants and charity. She and another developer named Phil Fish blasted them for being transphobic due to the nature of the application process, and when they got backlash for that they pulled the victim card. Then shortly after, TFYC indiegogo campain got hacked and completely shut down, and indiegogo blamed the 'gamergate misogynists' and made a thread on 4chan's /v/ board denouncing and refuting them. And you know what those 'gamergate misogynists' wound up doing? They raised 17,000 dollars to the TFYC campaign and created the Vivian James mascot to represent the average female gamer. That money made the TFYC earn more than 6 grand over the intended fundraising goal and made it happen. http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/201...22bf595448

But most online news sources that covered this just kept to the side of the girls claiming to be harassed. I realize that harassment of women online is a real thing and it sucks, but when there are women who cry wolf about it and use it to their advantage like that, it doesn't help at all. And I really don't like how those claims wound up giving gamers a bad name across all kinds of media outlets. I could get into similar claims made about Anita and Breanna Wu's threats, but that would be a whole nother set of paragraphs.

I mean, I'm not trying to sway your opinion about all this (it feels like you already have your mind made up about it), but I'm just trying to explain things from the gamergate side, minus the trolls that tainted the movement. Like I said earlier, I do have friends that side with gamergate, and while I do lean more towards the gamergate side, I do realize that it has assholes in it's group that use it as a means to troll people.

Quote:The smartest thing that can be done for those individuals who are truly concerned about ethics is to distance themselves from the Gamergate name all together. Even if it's benign now, it's sordid history of rampant misogyny will forever taint it's name. Start fresh with the same ideals and no one would be upset over it.

I would agree with that, but the thing is the trolls and assholes that invaded gamergate would probably just go and do the same thing with whatever they start fresh with. Gamergate is still around now (I think they are currently criticizing a new Fire Emblem game for heavy censoring and poor localization of the US port) but while a lot of the things they complain about seem pretty self-entitled, it seems to me that there is a problem with games being censored for US customers to avoid said gaming company from coming under fire for being offensive to some. Even the online manager for Tecmo claimed that DOAX3 wasn't getting a US release because of all the hate that games like that are getting in the US because of female representation (in all honesty though, I'm skeptic about that as well. It's probably because the game just wouldn't sell as much here in the US and would be a wasted effort. Whether that's because it would offend people, or if US gaming consumers are generally over the 3d titties of DOA or both, I'm not sure, but I'm betting that's the main reason. Too risky money-wise)