Is gaming culture going to shit?

I hate how these idiots give so much publicity to these old games which in turn has jacked up the prices. With that said her how this garbage affects me: I wouldn't call myself a collector because I am extremely frugal when it comes to buying retro games and I won't buy another until I have beaten the previous game,but because of these untalented people games like conker's bad fur day are $90. I am foaming at the mouth pissed and why? Well I could spend $90 on every title I want and I don't lack funds to do so ,but can I justify the purchase(nope). Another thing is that I like playing real copies on original hardware so I am somewhat of a purest.

 

I'm not talking about the games, I would even say that in the past 3-4 years quality has improved after some low point during the last decade.

This is strictly about the culture of gaming, not the games themselves.

 

Two wrongs don't make a right. It's problematic that women are treated as background characters in games. End of story. It doesn't make those games' treatment of women OK because men are sometimes too. It doesn't make those games' treatment of women OK because women can be the hero of another game as well.

A lot of progress will begin with agreeing with the statement: "Yes, some, maybe even many, games show women in a bad light and that's not healthy". From there, depending on your part in gaming, you can choose to make games that don't, buy games that don't, or buy any game you want, with the understanding that just because Peach is in the periphery of Super Mario Brothers 1, you shouldn't put the women in the periphery your life.

So what? So did a president of the USA & the Prince of Wales. People cheat. Men and women. Seriously, get over this. Contact the producers of Jerry Springer or Cheaters if you have to, but it is ridiculous to belabor this point.

It's one thing to talk about journalistic integrity, but how does that justify threatening/slut shaming Quinn? I'll grant that there may be two groups of people here - those who are genuinely and only upset with Kotaku, and those attacking Quinn, but there is no denying that the negativity thrown towards Quinn is disproportionate compared to the backlash against the journalists. Remember, it's "journalistic integrity", so why is Quinn feeling the brunt of it?

 

Don't fucking start with zoe, last time the entire thread got locked.

And I don't see anyone slutshaming her, in any case her rabid fans have been slutshaming other girl games and developers for daring to criticize her social climber actions.

Seriously, that shit was classic nepotism, in another time we would be talking about the "ol' boys network"

 

My point is their is an issue, but blindly protecting her from everything (including valid criticism) isn't a good thing. Not to mention the harassment, by her fans and friends, you get when you directly try to criticize her. Because quite frankly her way of augmenting her points (including without allowing people to make counter arguments) is dishonest on a good day. Not to mention a good chunk of people, including women, simply don't care. To quote a female friend of mine "Why would I care if I played a man in a game, if it fits it fits. And most AAA games are like action movies, which most of the time also have male leads, simply because it fits better."

I'm point out that it's the initiation event, nothing deeper. But quite a good chunk of people when seeing criticism of gaming journalism try to make it about Quinn, even if she is unrelated (this to the point that in most places it's hard to talk about journalism without someone coming along and spamming about what an awful person they are because of "what they do" to Zoe). Also she herself and her fans are quite good in harassment themselves, just pointing that out.

It really doesn't (at least not to the scope claimed). But it's understandable why she would get at least some harassment because of her social climbing skills (including screaming harassment for attention when their was non to speak of, when she first became one of the "in crowd").

But again, not to the amount she has now. Unless they want to make it about the "in crowd" as she would be the most obvious offender, but I have yet to hear much about that so I won't count that.

 

I see all this a bit like wikileaks and snowden in that much like we all somehow knew the government was spying on everyone it was still just a rumor and little else, you couldn't come up with one specific piece of evidence, that is until the leak.

What is funny is that just like mainstream media was demonizing snowden and assange now gaming media is demonizing anyone who criticizes zoe or her allies.

Why? simple: credibility. Doritosgate was nothing compared to this and yet it was a huge problem for gaming media. But this, this level of total nepotism and corruption and inside the indie community nonetheless! the one that was supposed to be the antithesis of all the shit that goes on with publishers and AAA games, this was an order of magnitude worse than doritosgate.

Unlike the rumors we used to hear now we have clear examples of who was involved, what was obtained/bargained for and the results. Doritosgate was a pretty shameless case of product placement but still doritos paying for the ad space was not a breach of journalistic integrity and ethics. However trading favors (be money or something else) and using connections to get an advantage over other people who most likely deserved that coverage more than her is a pretty big deal, and since we have so much information about how it went it can no longer be dismissed as "only a rumor".

What little credibility gaming media has left depends on them denying this, else they would be admitting they knew what was going on all the time and that would be the last nail in the coffin.

 

Oh yeah, remember how Geoff Keighley was publicly shamed, threatened with rape or worse, his accounts hacked, his personal information exhibited, and specific death threats were made to him, familiy and friend in the name of "journalistic integrity"?

Come to think of it, no one at Kotaku has been harassed, threatened, or doxxed during all of this. I thought all this these anti-ethic behaviour was in the name of "journalistic integrity" so they could attack the "corrupt media", no?

No offense Shadowlayer, but you claim a lot of outrageous things, but do not show credible sources.

After seeing the videos, I can confirm that at no point she claims games brainwash poeple to become misgynist. It would be nice if you could find the quote, tough.

She is more concerned with how women are represented as the amount of games where this happens to women is overwhelming. Also....exactly how many games do that? And does Mirror's Edge actually treats men the same way games like the Hitman or Duke Nukem series treat women? The amount where women are treated as background decoration or worse are the norm, not just one title released years ago.

I would certainly love to see the source of that quote. Maybe it's a misunderstanding and she was talking about gender roles being a social construct. Anita Sarkeesians suscribes to the definition of feminism as..."working towards the equal treatment of women socially, culturally, institutionally, and economically." ( as seen here: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fr...arkeesian-of-feminist-frequency/1100-6382189/) which has no relation to differences in our bodies, but in how we are trated and we treat others. At no point on her videos does she talk about sexual dimorphism.

So let's assume that the angry ex-boyfriend that posted all that on the internet is telling the truth and was not just an angry ex-boyfriend posting on the internet.

If she did or did not cheat on her boyfriend, it does not mean she deserves to be judged and punished as she has been. Or any punishment from strangers, after all. How would you feel if strangers made your life hell for a private personal matter, without having all of the facts? Can you imagine your friends and familiy being harrassed for a personal, private matter about you that was made public?

As far as "coincidences", Kotaku has proven that their coverage was not influenced in any way (http://kotaku.com/in-recent-days-ive-been-asked-several-times-about-a-pos-1624707346). Kotaku, or it's editors, have not been target for harassment. But Quinn has, because this is not about journalism at all.

Sarkesian recieved a ton of harrassment before even the first frame of video of her series was filmed. There was a game on newgrounds about punching her in the face, her wikipedia destroyed, and more even before the kickstarter finished. People did not know what she had to say on her videos, but clearly wanted her out of the medium, because they were afraid of...a video talking about games, I guess.

The most basic search in google will prove that media (both inside games and traditional/mainstream) already covered these things, and at no point were proven false. And the latest attacks had first hand eyewitness, among them Adam Sessler, who is no longer is a videogame critic. All the claims that they are faking the harrassment is a common practice against women called "Gaslighting".

 

Proper analysis of Thunderf00t intentional logical fallacies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N-tkrxAEWw

 

You are deliberately taking me out of context here, I said clearly that doritosgate was nothing compared to this, and yet that was a pain in the ass so no wonder this exploded like it did. The fact of the matter is that this is no longer about zoe but the network of corruption she's involved in which goes all the way up to the GDC. All this censorship has nothing to do with helping zoe, it was all about damage control because her huge fuckup exposed all of this and everyone involved, and the bullshit argument of slutshaming people like you spread around is part of that after all is better for these assholes if everybody talks the awful behavior of a few gamers rather than the endemic corruption of an entire industry.

In a way we should be thankful to zoe, for if it weren't for her pathological lying that got constantly debunked (fake threats, fake hacks, lies about people she knew) none of this would have come to light.

 

Then why is only her name constantly brought up all the time? Who else is involved? What did they do?

 

She implies it be stating the whole bogus "third person effect" (at least as how she presents it), as she says "the more you think you aren't affected by media, the more you are". While the third person effect is actually only a perceptual thing, you over estimate how much others are effected by a message compared to yourself, and has nothing to do with actual affect a message has(and she might have a heavy case of it). Suprise, suprise, when you look at her sources the only one that mentions the "third person effect" is a feminist speaker at TEDx (separate and unregulated by TED), who get's it wrong also. And literally a simple google search or going to the library and opening a psych book would find you that info easily correct.

Duke Nukem is a 80's action hero parody (and in general in theme a parody), so that can be blamed on 80's action heroes. Also Hitman treats women and men the same, as in: They are not your mark, don't kill them or be penalized. (BTW which she puts out of context in one of her videos as killing the strippers will get you penalized and thus is as far as optimal play as can be, it fits right up there with jumping in pits in Mario to talk about games making people suicidal). Also making a game for your target audience (males 16 to 25) where you play this "bad dude" is bad? Most "bad dude" style stories/theming in any media uses women the same way. Why? Because it's to some extend trying to simulate real life or at least through rose colored glasses.

Damsel in distress part 1, at point 21:35. My point is she acts as if women are the same as man physically, as if the only difference between men and women physically is genitalia, but seeing how we are a dimorphic species that is plainly untrue. Again this doesn't take much research to find.

Did she deserve punishment not really. But I question, both Sarkeesians and Quinn's, claims of death treats and such especially if you think the are serious you would call the authorities. Seeing how the first thing they would say is don't talk about it as that could aggravate the "hostile". Yet both talk about contacting the authorities yet scream it of the rooftops. At the very least it's possibly self destructive to get attention, and a very questionable/stupid action to do if it were real.

Also there have been cases, not Quinn specific, that it was the case and those are retroactively updated with the added info in the case of Kotaku. Coincidences I mean the people she supposedly slept with; if she only slept with people outside of the industry almost no one would care.

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Before her current series yes, before her kickstarter no; all her harassment started during the first few days of her kickstarter. She had a series before that that was more general, but if you look at her previous videos and her kickstarter page you can easily see her trying to push an extremist feminist agenda.

They are ALSO not proven true, only claims have been made by the women (with the exclusion of hate speeches on the internet, of course). And seeing how long these harassment have taken (especially in regards to Anita) you would expect people would leave a ton of voice mails or something else more tangible than claims (and both apparently throwing the most basic thing not to do in the wind, if they did in the first place).

Also what would the probability be if Adam and Zoe both met outside of the industry, or even that he wouldn't be biased for her seeing how the are at least acquainted.

BTW I'm not in any way condoning the harassment of these women, I'm just skeptical of there claims as their is no real evidence outside of claims to support their claims. And of course critical of Anita and want unbiased journalism.

 

See, this exactly what I mean when I say you make outrageous claims without a credible source. What is your source on these 2 claims? It really sounds like conspiracy theory at best. I don't see any media (game, mainstream, traditional) corroborating this, but you claim it as a fact. Was this on The Guardian, Forbes, or what?

 

Perhaps it is because they are afraid of retaliation? All of the "reputable" websites that discuss this issue choose the side of least resistance. That is, they make the topic solely about the harassment and ignore everything else. Just about every discussion I have seen regarding the "conspiracy" doesn't address the concerns brought up and instead dismisses everything outright because there are some idiots out there making threats and harassing people. Both sides have an army of idiots on them that only attack the "enemy".

Harassment is bad. Doxxing is bad. Threats are bad. None of this should be tolerated, but a few people doing this should not silence everyone else who want to have an actual discuss of the issues.

 

Why would shedding the light on harrassment be the path of least resistance? That is exposing them to harrassment after all.

What perfect proof do we have of "everything else" that both games and mainstream press, like Forbes, The Guardian, et al. do not have? Where is this credible evidence coming from?

We want journalists to be objective, truthful, but we also want people to take our conjectures or fantasies as unbiased fact.

 

Except that Kotaku has been retroactively updating old posts to state some journalist had a relationship (from friends to love interest) with the dev the cover. Which is at admittance of lose of journalistic integrity on one of the major gaming sites, yet that is completely ignored.

And it's the path of least resistance because at that point they should also question themselves and the consumer question them also (which they already do). Also reporting on that would also be harder than the "look at those poor girls" shtick they do now. Because anyone who ever wrote a press release will tell you that the vast majority of journalists are lazy and want to copy/paste an press release in full if possible.

 

Because it requires no investigation and no examination of the issues being discussed. No one in their right mind would argue in favor of harassment, as everyone can (or should) agree that harassment/threats/hacking is wrong.

Aside from the obvious vitriol still present on social media, what proof do we have of any of the hacking or threat claims? Aren't the bloggers taking everything from ZQ and AS as absolute fact without investigation? I'm not saying that these things didn't happen (I can certainly see idiots going too far like that), but right now it is just hearsay. Journalists would follow up with the police reports and the service providers that were supposedly hacked. They would at least talk to someone other than the person making a claim. Why is this too much to ask? A proper journalistic investigation may uphold everything that ZQ and AS have said and discount everything else, but no one is even looking at "everything else".

 

Directly from Kotaku's statment:

"On March 31, Nathan published the only Kotaku article he's written involving Zoe Quinn. It was about Game Jam, a failed reality show that Zoe and other developers were upset about being on. At the time, Nathan and Zoe were professional acquaintances. He quoted blog posts written by Zoe and others involved in the show. Shortly after that, in early April, Nathan and Zoe began a romantic relationship. He has not written about her since. Nathan never reviewed Zoe Quinn's game Depression Quest, let alone gave it a favorable review. "

http://kotaku.com/in-recent-days-ive-been-asked-several-times-about-a-pos-1624707346

Anyone can look trough the kotaku archives in doubt. In other words, all those claims are conjectures.

Also, it's very common for people on the media to have personal relationship with others in one form or another. Hell, just recently president Obama attended a wedding of an MSNBC news host! Politicians and the media that covers them together shared a social event. Naturally it depends of the editors to make the decision of when this affects the coverage. Kotaku has made the same choices most mainstream media does about that. And this controversy was born out of allegations that a look trough Kotaku archives would show that it just that: conjectures from people too eager to attack a woman. After all, no one attacked, harrassed or doxxed the Kotaku staff, right? Aren't they the "corrupt" media?

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It's not a "shitck", it's a fact. Just have a look at the @ responses on their twitter accounts to see for yourself.

Just because the media reports things that do not align with our viewpoints do not mean they are not telling the truth.

 

Unlike individuals in social media, profesional media outlets tend to have a strong chain of command where every article is fact-checked as best as possible before being published. People in social media can make up an entire conspiracy theory and present it as a fact. But in news media, for it to become a story it had to be pitched, written, and then aprooved by a chain of command. Can the media fail? Yeah, it's not perfect. But in this case, some people prefer to believe that all media are in a conspiracy to protect itself from gamers who so far have not harrassed, hacked or doxx any member of the alleged "corrupt" sites.

 

I agree completely with your statement. So why hasn't the media done ANY investigation and fact-checking of the information presented? The only things that I have seen written about are basically "he said/she said", tabloid-quality hearsay. I want someone to properly investigate the hacking and threat allegations. I want someone to investigate the game jam incidents. I want someone to investigate the alleged IGF rigging. I want to see properly presented facts, not two sides screaming at each other and calling each other names. Proper journalism is there to debunk false claims as well as support valid ones.

 

I'm not talking about Nathan here, I'm talking about the crew in general. To give you an example: http://kotaku.com/the-steam-achievement-that-nobody-unlocked-1610073943 she mentions, in small, that she is friends with the women she covers (after Stephen Totilo said they should add it). Which is true (currently), yet fails to mention they have dated. Patricia Hernandez also lives with a dev she have covered since they moved in together (which they have mentioned on twitter, when they moved in together august 2013). Don't you think living and have dated (and still being friends with) different devs isn't a conflict of interest?
Stop trying to make it about Zoe, I simply don't care about her. Except that it annoys me that she gets tons of attention for calling all kinds of harassment, and it being reported as truth, without giving any proof, save twitter harassment, apart from her own claims.

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It has nothing to do with my own viewpoints, it has to do with their being bigger fish to fry yet it's not done and everyone who brings it up will get all kinds of replies trying to make it about AS and ZQ. Basically derailing, intentional or not, any attempt at any serious talk on the matter.
But Mairsil answered this one for me already.

But in regards your reply to him; aside from twitter harassment, they bring all claims of other harassment against the women as fact without any form of evidence to back it up. In what world is that fact checking?