Gamergate?

[Xray_Doc]

I was just wondering what some of you guys thought about Gamergate and everything surrounding it.

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Alright, I should probably explain what Gamergate is.

ProGamergate people want journalistic ethics to be used in the gaming journalism community and want articles to be based on facts, not personal opinions.

Antigamergate believe Gamergate is about shunning women out of a boys only club and say it is about misogyny in videogames and the industry.

I'm not going to put my opinions in the definitions, these are just where both sides stand. If you want more information just Google both sides or ask for someone to post info.

[PabloDons]

you mean the part with people promoting nerd bullying? It's even more stupid than general feminism. I apologize for being pissed in the following section, but god fucking damnit do I hate the incredible stupidity of those parts of society. It's like a whole new level of stupidity occurred by some idiot having kids with a fucking cat. I mean holy fucking piece of fucking shit, it's like they literally smash their faces on a keyboard and post that shit on twitter, then they think hey, that's what I'ma post on facebook, then press tweet. I swear to god there is some dude with a tiny bit of mind left in his head unlike all those people that's going to go on a rampage killing every god damn idiot posting this shit.

once again, I'm going to apologize if there was any offensive language above

(btw i don't quite understand gamergate. is the anti-gamergate people that are pro-nerdbullying?)

[Xray_Doc]

Yeah, that was the CEO of Gawker, a gaming 'journalism' website who posted on Twitter to bring back bullying. I am extremely pro Gamergate and want journalistic ethics and want the bullshit in the system to stop. I just want to see what everyone else thought before putting out my opinion.

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[PhysoniumI]

Gamergate is shit. The journalists who are propogating most of these misnomers aren't that smart. Women have been just as shitty in the videogaming community such as Fine Young Capitalists and their runin with Zoe Quinn. Yeah, women are oppressed in that 10% of games and in the other 90%, they're treated no differently. Yeah, mysogeny is a thing in games, but it still doesn't give you a right to inhibit the good that some people try to do.

(http://www.vice.com/read/meet-the-female...inists-828) is what I was referring to, can find that in other places too. Ah 4chan you bastards doing something good for once.

[Xray_Doc]

Most moved here since moot doesn't allow gg threads. http://www.8chan.co/gg

[AltruismAndCake]

I don't know much about Gamergate itself, but I figured I'd chip in with what I do know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipcWm4B3...e=youtu.be

One of the covered topics in 60 seconds:
Oh and one last thing, if you hear anyone say #GamerGate is about harassment or misogyny, laugh in their stupid face and remind them that we donated more than $70,000 to help women make video games and no game site would talk about it.

Sounds like the people generally has no idea what's going. Adobe said "We aren't associated with Gawker" after his bullying article. Someone with Gamergate asked for support from Adobe and Adobe said, "Hell no! You aren't dragging us into this conversation!" (I'm paraphrasing btw) The blog post by Adobe is here: http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/201...kfire.html

All in all, media is corrupt and people are crazy AFAIK

[AFtExploision]

"Gamergate is bad because of all the harassment from the hashtag!" "That is only a small part of it." "Still is bad"

"Gawker is an example of how bad anti gamer gate is!" "We aren't associated with Gawker"

[Xray_Doc]

"I'm not a gamer, I don't like to play videogames." -A Sarkesian

[AltruismAndCake]

I figured I would chip in some more. What EXACTLY is Gamergate? Not #gamergate, but Gamergate itself. Does anyone have a link to the site? It's moot to argue that Gamergate is evil if we don't know anything about them. AFAIK anti-#gamergate is right about how wrong the misogyny in video games is and how women are mistreated in the industry. I was talking with someone outside this forum and he was surprised at how people were able to actually find a female devs to persecute.

I read this article. It feels that #gamergate shows a deaper issue: polarized politics:
http://www.vox.com/2014/11/1/7136343/gam...everything
People choose to follow what their political party tells them to, instead of what they honestly believe is right or wrong. If our party tells us that bullying/misogyny/racism is OK, do we follow?

Why is this whole conversation pinned on Gamergate?

[jxu]

Or maybe people follow a political party because it matches what people believe is right or wrong? And because the topic of this thread is "gamergate"? You're not contributing at all, just look at both sides' arguments and make up your decision.

I want to add this article into the discussion http://gawker.com/how-we-got-rolled-by-t...1649496579

[AltruismAndCake]

You're not contributing at all, just look at both sides' arguments and make up your decision.

That says that there are only two parties: the right one and the wrong one. Which was the point of the article I posted. Why must we be so divided? Why can't there be more than two? I support journalist ethics, reporting facts not opinions. Does that make me pro-gamergate? I'm against harassing women and sending death threats. Does that make me anti-gamergate? Isn't trying to push people into making a quick decision go against the idea of fact over opinion?

I read the whole Gawker article and some of their references. It seems like they have serious issues, hating gamers and spreading stereotypes but they a point about something, Intel backed off on for the wrong reasons and jumped to conclusions. This is the article that was the reason Intel stopped supporting Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/22440...e_over.php
In the article he isn't spreading sterotypes AFAIK, he says there is a group of gamers that are toxic in our culture. He's saying that people should stop catering to them, because games can be so much more, an art form . I just play games for fun but wouldn't it be great if games could be fun and art? IDK that's just how I feel.

I'm not going to vote until I'm sure it's the right choice.

[Xray_Doc]

The feminists are TRYING to turn it into a political issue. Because lets face it, in politics nothing changes. This is not a political issue, this is a consumer revolt.

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As for the death threats, look up the actual tweets made (as far as I know of).

Not a single one references gamers or Gamergate. Those people have no association with the movement and are either trolls or the people themselves trying to get attention. Yes, I do believe this is a competition for who gets the most attention. https://archive.today/bvacS

[AFtExploision]

Gamergate is shit. The journalists who are propogating most of these misnomers aren't that smart. Women have been just as shitty in the videogaming community such as Fine Young Capitalists and their runin with Zoe Quinn. Yeah, women are oppressed in that 10% of games and in the other 90%, they're treated no differently. Yeah, mysogeny is a thing in games, but it still doesn't give you a right to inhibit the good that some people try to do.

(http://www.vice.com/read/meet-the-female...inists-828) is what I was referring to, can find that in other places too. Ah 4chan you bastards doing something good for once.

What did I just read you said you hated gamergate but then complimented 4chan

[PhysoniumI]

TBH gamers are a victim of everyone's whims because "everyone is the same online."

Yeah, EVERYONE on the internet is a dick to women, just like people are dicks to women/everyone on games like COD.

My guildies in the current game I'm burning myself out on aren't sexist dicks. Yeah, some dress IS mysogenistic but hell, we aren't saying you're shit and should go back to the kitchen.


How people portray gamergate due to idiots like Sarkeesian is the primary problem. What even is the point of videogame press...? All we need is stuff like E3 and we're happy. We don't need randoms posting useless articles that are completly one sided.

[AFtExploision]

Phys. you sound very pro-gamergate right now, but you voted for anti-gamergate.

[AltruismAndCake]

What even is the point of videogame press...? All we need is stuff like E3 and we're happy. We don't need randoms posting useless articles that are completly one sided.

'nuff said.

OK maybe not but I did some research.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/quinnspiracy#fn4
This records the first day of the controversy: August 16th, 2014, the day Zoey is accused by her boyfriend of cheating on him to get better reviews for her game "Depression Quest"in this post:
http://thezoepost.wordpress.com/
I can neither verify or deny the claim, BUT she said that gamergate was directly created from that story:
https://twitter.com/TheQuinnspiracy/stat...2046242816
I decided to do some digging through twitter post before August 16th, 2014 and this is what I got:
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23gamergat...6&src=typd
If I did the search wrong please correct me, but while there is one post on gaming and politics, most appear to be random unrelated nonsense. Which may prove Quinn's point: people are using gamergate to harass women(or at least her). And even if the allegation against Zoey is true, if Gamergate didn't exist before the posted date (August 16th, 2014), then how is this ethics in media? Sex scandals leading to good reviews are ethics concerns in general, not ethics in journalism.

If you know of anything about Gamergate before the posted date, please please please post and correct me.

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Forgot to say that we needn't care for gaming gossip. E3 is suffient.

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Also forgot to say that people shouldn't try to rewrite history.

[Xray_Doc]

I can tell you GG tries not to focus on Zoe since it's not about her and we don't want to give them more fuel for their fire.

One more thing, reread my first post to see which side is pro and which is anti, because I think you guys are mixing them up

[AFtExploision]

By people you mean phys

[PhysoniumI]

My opinion is gamergate is stupid entirely. The press is bad, the mysogeny is bad and some people are outright idiots.

Yeah.

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Feel free to remove my vote entirely as it's all bullshit and a ploy to earn money, by starting a shitstorm, as are tabloids.

Note: This whole thread tends to end out being a shitpile of opinions.

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The most interesting thing is more of the mainstream media is picking it up. I was laughing hysterically during the whole Colbert episode on it, which neither my sister nor my mother thought was particularly funny. I am thinking about sending her a copy of the knowyourmeme thing, but it's not particularly censored (for language) so she may not really love that.

[PhysoniumI]

Tbh the term "gamergate" is wrong.

Gamer (obvious) - gate (tool to block things OUT of somethign else).
-- therefore blocking out people from gaming (women)

anti - *
-- the exact opposite...?

I didn't read your definitions of the term, that's why I misguidedly voted anti-gamergate.

[AltruismAndCake]

I'm still leaning towards anti-gamergate, not because ethics in journalism is bad, but because the gamergate movement didn't exist before Quinn's scandal (real or fake idk). The people say they are about ethics in journalism and I believe some of them are but what about the people that started the movement? Are they about ethics?

xray - You say Gamergate tries not to focus on Zoey, which makes it sound like Gamergate existed before Zoey. Is this true or false? What about my link from a twitter search?
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23gamergat...6&src=typd

Phy - the definition is interesting, considering Quinn said that gamergate originated against her

[Xray_Doc]

We always were annoyed with the journalists and felt something was wrong, but what happened with Zoe just pushed it off the edge. People realized competing journalists were actually working together to produce content that a certain group wanted. http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Londo...lism-elite

We say we don't care about her sex life, at least I don't. But what I care about is she did all of that to get attention and get good ratings for her game.

---

Oh and one more thing, there is no official Gamergate leader or Twitter, whoever made that account was probably fishing for attention

[AFtExploision]

It started because of the silence of media on Quinn and all the anti gamer articles that dropped on the same day really opened about how corrupt video games jornos are

[AltruismAndCake]

Xray - We always were annoyed with the journalists and felt something was wrong

We as in gamers or gamergate?

what happened with Zoe just pushed it off the edge. People realized competing journalists were actually working together to produce content that a certain group wanted.

Did anything happen between these two sentences? Because you said they are catering to a group, when, in fact, bribery was going on (if that). This is a concern, yes, and yes, they collaborated on the "gamers are dead" articles commiting two wrongs: collaborating and condemning. BUT what happened between "The Zoey Post" and media's "proof" that "gamers are dead"? Answer me honestly, did ANYONE use #gamergate between that period? "The Zoey Post" did NOT prove collusion, it proved individual accounts corruption (yes it makes a difference).

My sentiment is that we should be using a different hashtag. The word gamergate as Phy himself said is inherently deceiving.

Origins matter, if it originated as a hate group, we shouldn't be standing behind their flag

When and why has the world become so polarized? GG verse anti-GG, republican verse democrat, communism verses capitalism, and so on. It seems like we are saying, "I am right and everyone who opposes me is wrong or ignorant on the true issue at hand". The facts are that both sides can have valid points. Don't you know that your not helping the issue by saying they don't know what GG is when you don't fully understand either? (ok maybe that's an assumption)

Generally my point is: stopping voting for the lesser of two evils, vote for the third guy.

Here is a list of "pro-gamergate" review sites; it's in quotes because they were smart enough to just stick to game reviews and not worry about the politics around them:
http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/c...onalities/

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Oh and one more thing, there is no official Gamergate leader or Twitter, whoever made that account was probably fishing for attention

I know that now, but the link still stands: #gamergate started directly because of Zoey

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I just read what you wrote Aft. Why should game review sites cover her actions? It's supposed to be a game review site not a gossip magazine

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Which, ironically, is what they became anyways

[AFtExploision]

Why should a site about gaming news not cover an indie developer that slept with the judge of a competition, the competition she displays as winning? Why should gaming news sites not cover an indie developer using nepotism? Why should a gaming news site not cover a game developer who, in her own words, committed rape, yet still cover the creator of CAH over an accused rape? These sites are not for reviews. They are for news in the gaming industry. Zoe was big news in the gaming industry that they actively censored. Gamergate formed as an affect of the games media NOT covering Zoe and their hypocrisy, if gaming sites had covered Zoe to begin with there would be no gamergate

[Xray_Doc]

I mean gamers. It only affected people from outside gaming when sites began not allowing conversation about it at all, like aft said above.

Also, make sure this doesn't become an argument, lets keep this a debate (not that I think it is).

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Yes, Gamergate started because of Zoe, I can agree. But the purpose of the movement is no longer derived towards her. And what really spawned the movement itself were all the Gamers Are Dead articles coming out at the same time. This showed us there was a collaboration between journalists and they were pushing a media view.

As for the hash tag, I forget the actor who came up with it but it references the Watergate scandal. I don't use Twitter a lot so I don't know a lot about it.

[AFtExploision]

Adam Baldwin?

[Xray_Doc]

Adam Baldwin?

I'm not good at remembering detailed specifics, this is why I'm better at math than social studies.

[AltruismAndCake]

I hope you can respect my decision: I'm going neutral on this. If it arose purely by journalist collusion, then I would say sure GG is right, but even then I'm not sure I would vote for GG, because voting for one or the other adds fuel to the fire. It's not GG vs bad ethics and it's not misogyny vs feminists.
It's ethics-in-journalism (good) and misogynists (bad) and trolls (bad) vs feminists (good) and misandrists (bad) and trolls (bad) with a few bystanders mixed in on both sides jumping to conclusions and getting mad when others disagree (bad or stupid?).

This is going to be a long debate ahead for some people. Hopefully the issues will alienate journalists and gamers to the point that gamers stop visiting those site and the problem will correct itself.

Aft - They are for news in the gaming industry. Why should a site about gaming news not cover an indie developer that slept with the judge of a competition.

My point is why do we need to know that someone cheated on a competion for good reviews? My opinion of all news, gaming or otherwise, is it should be about things that actually matter, and not be a hype machine: "Broccoli kills! More at 11" and it's just some fluke disease or about the side effects of over-consumption.

Unfortunately news (as it currently is) doesn't matter because it rarely makes a difference in our day-to-day lives unless we obsess over it.
^This sentence is up for debate

Boycott Zoey and the media, so we can get on with our lives.

Xray - Also, make sure this doesn't become an argument, lets keep this a debate

I alway try to keep a debate tone of voice, but it's hard to tell what I sound like to someone else. I genuinely believe everyone here has the right heart on the matter: that cheating, manipulating, lying, and hating are all wrong. I think the only difference here is how we feel the wrongs should be righted. You believe (at least I think you believe) that the media should be pointed out for the collusion, I feel dropping the issue and avoiding media is the way to go. They can't survive if you don't feed them.
^Also needs verified. How long can a news anchor last without attention? A week? Month? Year?

[AFtExploision]

Alt - because the game dev displays that she is the winner of the competition. Also, they covered her being "harassed" for a while before this and actually spun a story where criticizing her actions became harassment. If it was no one, then nothing would of happened. Zoe was someone they HAD wrote about extensively, and had done things that other people got coverage for (alleged rape) but they skipped over her story, and spun lies about it to keep down the controversy and said it was for "privacy" which is hypocritical to other stories they ran in the past. It was EXTREMELY hypocritical the way news sites covered (or rather, didn't) this story and the censorship that went on when people talked about it. THAT is why gamergate started, censorship of people talking about Zoe and the hypocritical way news sites covered the story. Also, where do you see ANY misogynists that can be directly related to gamergate, besides trolls? On the same note, anti-gamergate is mainly non-misandrists with a tumblr mindset.

On boycotting media - that is what gamergate is doing. They are contacting advertisers to pull ads on these sites. Remember how much xray wanted to get through gamergate is not at all about zoe? That is gamergate not giving attention to Zoe. Media is VERY important to our day-to-day lives. It is how we get the goings on in the world, like EA being hacked and 40,000 accounts possibly getting stolen (A story that was not posted because of the bad ethics in the video game news industry).

I also do not agree with you that feminists == good. If these were people that actually tried to fix things that were unjust to women in society or try to help women in the developing world, I'd be supporting them. But the feminists in the gamergate argument are ones with a tumblr mindset, which are mostly privileged females making gendered issues out of non-gendered issues and can't cope with the fact that for most of video game history the main demographic were males, and so video games today are mostly aimed at males. Just because you're a feminist doesn't make you good. I agree on some things they say, but for the most part these "feminists" (put in quotes because they really don't do anything to stop unjust treatment of women on the basis of gender) are control freaks that don't know how the media works.

[Xray_Doc]

I wouldn't harass your opinion about being anti, let alone being neutral. I'm only talking about the way I see this controversy.

[AFtExploision]

No one said you would ;__;

[Xray_Doc]

No one said you would ;__;

Eh, well he said he was kinda sorry but he was going neutral, so I just want to be reassuring.

[AltruismAndCake]

If these were people that actually tried to fix things that were unjust to women in society or try to help women in the developing world, I'd be supporting them.

I use the term feminism as "the advocacy of women's rights that are equal to men's on all applicable issues". I suppose I forgot that there exist people between feminist and misandrists (why isn't that spelled right?) that go beyond fair rights for women but they don't quite hate men.

I also do not agree with you that feminists == good. If these were people that actually tried to fix things that were unjust to women in society or try to help women in the developing world, I'd be supporting them.

By my definition feminist == good but you do make a point... stupid feminists == stupid to the point of doing more harm than good for your cause.

these "feminists" are control freaks that don't know how the media works.

The problem is the media IS rigged against GG even IRL. All it takes is to read the wrong article and you'll end up on the anti-GG side of the issue. The problem is that you can't make an argument against the unethical behavior in media without at least mentioning Zoey. And if you mention Zoey, then they'll start reading her posts. Zoey seems to have 0 problem with calling GG a hate group, and refuses to let anyone be neutral on the issue. And honestly... the whole GG incident would probably go away if she stopped speaking. GG would complain about the ethics, anti-GG would complaint about the trolls in GG but the complaints would slowly drift away as the main antagonists are gone and there would be no one saying the middle is for cowards.

I got side tracked there, main point: unless the trolls on your side are dealt with, people will continue to believe what they want to believe.

The Plan for Defeating the Troll Threat (Half joking, half serious)
Basic plan is to pull off a online white knight, except instead of rescuing the maidens in distress in return for sexual favors, we use it as an opportunity to preach the message of our Lord and Savior, Gamergate, and hit's ethics in journalism ways. And not random maidens, the ones that are targeted by the GG trolls. But that's just my opinion.

While I'm talking about fantasy worlds, there was a moment when Phy was anti-GG that I thought of joining him, but he swapped sides. If he didn't I would have said that while he's a capitalist and I'm a communist, we could have held hands and sang the words "Building a better tomorrow together". We would have invented lyrics along the way, until this thread way derailed and closed. But that didn't happen. Oh well, it's probably better that way.

BTW I'm not communist but don't tell jxu or whatshisname that. I still want to antagonize them and make them think.

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Oh if you want the last say in the conversation, just don't say my name in your next post. Since I voted neutral it's probably better that someone else has the final post.

[Xray_Doc]

They are feminists, trying to get rights only for women, but use the cover of egalitarianism, the rights for all/both genders.

[AFtExploision]

They are feminists, trying to get rights only for women, but use the cover of egalitarianism, the rights for all/both genders.

Exactly. Feminism started as a movement to get rights for women (thus, why it is called FEMINism). This isn't a bad thing, but it had nothing to do with men. The first feminists just used men as an example of rights that women didn't have and felt that they needed.

Also, prominent gamergate's all try to stop the trolls and condone harassment.

[PhysoniumI]

The people like Sarkeesian did succeed as shown in the recent Colbert episode where he interviewed her. Their goal was to make the public go nuts with their half-baked and single sided ideas as most of the world is unwilling to do some research and know that a lot of what they say is shit.

Alt- Karl Marx is my savior. All hail Marxisim! (hell yes, best government ever, on paper)

[AFtExploision]

All heil Potato Marx

[Xray_Doc]

So we have to go bigger. We have to get on the Today show top story.

[AltruismAndCake]

So we have to go bigger. We have to get on the Today show top story.

Sorry I don't think that's how it works. Once the media picks a side it defends its own. AFAIK all media is in cahoots... except fox news and onion news. God only knows what the old curmudgeons at fox news will do. Onion news is a satire but i does convince people sometimes xD
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/25...12413.html

So are there any other news outlets we can try? I'm drawing blanks.

[Xray_Doc]

D-did we l-lose?

[AltruismAndCake]

D-did we l-lose?

Depends on what you define as losing. If losing is that the majority of people believe you, then yes you probably lost. If losing means that the majority of people that think believe in you, then fight brave, fight bold, for victory can not be taken from us!

[PhysoniumI]

We lost from the beginning tbh.