Vice: Meet the Female Gamer Born of Anti-Feminist Internet Drama
- Thread starter titusandronicus
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AlimNassor
Banned
Oh and /tv/=bane shitposting 24/7
have you ever seen /v/ discuss vidya games? I haven't.
have you ever seen /v/ discuss vidya games? I haven't.
Yes, quite a lot in fact.
I mean it's less so now that we have all this feminism stuff, horrible journalism, shitty reboots and horrible sequels and most of what they talk about is how gaming has gone down the shitter, but it's still there.
mullet2000
Member
A green and purple sweater?
Thanks Doc.
Thanks Doc.
I did my due diligence and read every last tweet and conversation related to TFYC, and I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty fucking disgusted, so I'm going to drop this, and I mean actually drop it this time, because I have nothing kind to say about Zoe Quinn or her supporters atm. This is all very disappointing. I hope TFYC can salvage this project, it's a great cause that deserves all the support it can get.
This was fascinating. Thanks for unlurking!
Entryhazard
Banned
So... which one is it?
That /v/ hates games it's an inner joke because people in it most of the time complain about some games, and the recurring discussion is berating someone because he likes game X
ChawlieTheFair
pip pip cheerio you slags!
Gotta say, that's fucking brilliant.
Similar /v/ lurker here, also an indie dev for whom that may matter (also apologize in advance for the typos and errors, english ain't my first language)
Not really wanted to come out as such, but as this thread is still standing, and hoping I don't get banned for this opinion, I'd like to adress a few things regarding the whole creation of Vivian and mostly the resentment of Zoe Quinn.
Some people have tried to also paint /v/ as doing this only "out of spite". That, due to our contrarian nature alone, we helped create a mascot, spread the word for a feminist initiative to whom we also donated thousands of dollars collectively.
You don't just do this out of spite. It was also for the support of an idea that /v/ was actually, very clumsily, trying to get out for very long but couldn't due to of course poor organisation and communication and anonymity:
-That most of 'em don't care about feminism or social justice, they care about the game, whoever wants to make it, as long as they want to make good games and encourage others to make good games, they'll support it.
The reasoning behind this is: The general opinion of /v/ these past few years is that part of indie and big studios development and the journalism related to it has been "corrupted" by a form of nepotism which favours status symbol, political agendas as well as marketing from both triple A studios (paid reviews, dewritos and stuff) but also indies who try to bolster publicity through repeated advertorials and exploiting popular modern issues to avoid discussion on their games.
Now that is an opinion, you might agree or disagree, that's fine, but i'm explaining ONE of the more "general reasonings" behind /v/'s action (and bitterness). That is how I see it at least, I might be corrected either here or on the numerous threads that are going on at the moment, and I'd be happy to correct myself but I think that is the gist of it (again, /v/ is far from being one person but I do this analysis after spending numerous days in these threads).
The fact that it all ties-in to Zoe Quinn is not because she had sex with five dudes (I can't say five guys, I keep getting hungry), but that she embodies these problems so much by being dishonest, having actually harassed fake targets to bolster her popularity (blaming Wizardchan, for example, who ironically is majorly filled with people who suffer from depression and anxiety, they have a suicide hotline hotlinked on the forums for crying out loud), trying to take down said campaign for reasons that seem dubious at best (see the tweets she had about it, I think they were posted before) and the general non-coverage of journalists who are willingly ignoring all this, but would gladly make speculative articles about innocent people like Brad Wardwell, who as targeted by Kotaku, also got death threats, had his children bullied at school for it. Yet no one bats an eye because it doesn't full in the overall "narrative".
And I pointed out that I'm an indie dev at the beginning because, from what I see here, this is legitimately scary. This means there IS a clique of people going around who decide "who gets in and who doesn't" based on an agenda, and with only a few tweets could destroy a career if they find that someone doesn't fit their world view. You can see the situation with JonTron for example, who's maybe only crime is to have poorly worded something or having been disinformed or slightly ignorant, and is now being attacked by Tim Schaefer's fan because the latter ousted him on twitter. (EDIT: Adding the quote from shackles to bring context though, "(...) Schafer tweeted the Tropes video saying everyone should watch it, JonTron tweeted at him with a strawman about being a "savage", and all Schafer said back was "That last one made me sad. From a guy with 1.2M YouTube subscribers." I wouldn't say Schafer ousted him".)
Now for the record, I hate the harassment that Anita Sarkeesian got, I don't like this "SJW Hitlist". I fully support women in video games, I actually actively try to get female friends into game dev, I want more trans, gays, blacks, female who are well written into games.
But I also want to express my contempt over Quinn's actions, as many on /v/ want to now, and in the current climate this is very, very hard to do without being called out as a hater or an MRA sympathiser. And as a dev, this can be even career breaking. I am sometimes fucking terrified to just use twitter because I fear some more popular blogger or journalist might decide to bring the axe to my head. And I don't like this kind of climate
Sorry for the long post, but I thought it was important for me to get it out, mostly because articles like the Vice one are now becoming common and I think are misguided. I'm totally open for discussion even if you disagree
Not really wanted to come out as such, but as this thread is still standing, and hoping I don't get banned for this opinion, I'd like to adress a few things regarding the whole creation of Vivian and mostly the resentment of Zoe Quinn.
Some people have tried to also paint /v/ as doing this only "out of spite". That, due to our contrarian nature alone, we helped create a mascot, spread the word for a feminist initiative to whom we also donated thousands of dollars collectively.
You don't just do this out of spite. It was also for the support of an idea that /v/ was actually, very clumsily, trying to get out for very long but couldn't due to of course poor organisation and communication and anonymity:
-That most of 'em don't care about feminism or social justice, they care about the game, whoever wants to make it, as long as they want to make good games and encourage others to make good games, they'll support it.
The reasoning behind this is: The general opinion of /v/ these past few years is that part of indie and big studios development and the journalism related to it has been "corrupted" by a form of nepotism which favours status symbol, political agendas as well as marketing from both triple A studios (paid reviews, dewritos and stuff) but also indies who try to bolster publicity through repeated advertorials and exploiting popular modern issues to avoid discussion on their games.
Now that is an opinion, you might agree or disagree, that's fine, but i'm explaining ONE of the more "general reasonings" behind /v/'s action (and bitterness). That is how I see it at least, I might be corrected either here or on the numerous threads that are going on at the moment, and I'd be happy to correct myself but I think that is the gist of it (again, /v/ is far from being one person but I do this analysis after spending numerous days in these threads).
The fact that it all ties-in to Zoe Quinn is not because she had sex with five dudes (I can't say five guys, I keep getting hungry), but that she embodies these problems so much by being dishonest, having actually harassed fake targets to bolster her popularity (blaming Wizardchan, for example, who ironically is majorly filled with people who suffer from depression and anxiety, they have a suicide hotline hotlinked on the forums for crying out loud), trying to take down said campaign for reasons that seem dubious at best (see the tweets she had about it, I think they were posted before) and the general non-coverage of journalists who are willingly ignoring all this, but would gladly make speculative articles about innocent people like Brad Wardwell, who as targeted by Kotaku, also got death threats, had his children bullied at school for it. Yet no one bats an eye because it doesn't full in the overall "narrative".
And I pointed out that I'm an indie dev at the beginning because, from what I see here, this is legitimately scary. This means there IS a clique of people going around who decide "who gets in and who doesn't" based on an agenda, and with only a few tweets could destroy a career if they find that someone doesn't fit their world view. You can see the situation with JonTron for example, who's maybe only crime is to have poorly worded something or having been disinformed or slightly ignorant, and is now being attacked by Tim Schaefer's fan because the latter ousted him on twitter. (EDIT: Adding the quote from shackles to bring context though, "(...) Schafer tweeted the Tropes video saying everyone should watch it, JonTron tweeted at him with a strawman about being a "savage", and all Schafer said back was "That last one made me sad. From a guy with 1.2M YouTube subscribers." I wouldn't say Schafer ousted him".)
Now for the record, I hate the harassment that Anita Sarkeesian got, I don't like this "SJW Hitlist". I fully support women in video games, I actually actively try to get female friends into game dev, I want more trans, gays, blacks, female who are well written into games.
But I also want to express my contempt over Quinn's actions, as many on /v/ want to now, and in the current climate this is very, very hard to do without being called out as a hater or an MRA sympathiser. And as a dev, this can be even career breaking. I am sometimes fucking terrified to just use twitter because I fear some more popular blogger or journalist might decide to bring the axe to my head. And I don't like this kind of climate
Sorry for the long post, but I thought it was important for me to get it out, mostly because articles like the Vice one are now becoming common and I think are misguided. I'm totally open for discussion even if you disagree
It's 'very hard' because nobody gives a fuck about men that do this. This whole debacle has its roots in slut shaming women.
I agree with this whole thing and I feel bad for wizardchan even the orginal article on Escapist had to change it's tone saying their was only evidence that she said it happen and that was it. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/130525-Depression-Quest-Dev-Faces-Harassment-after-Steam-Submission-Update even though there was no proof beyond her word it was still passed.
That's definitely not true in this case, people were pushing pretty hard against the games journalists, especially the guy who chaired that one indie games award while in a relationship with Zoe.
Objectively Bad Opinion
Member
When did the definition of slut change to "someone who sabotages indiegogo campaigns"?
But that's the thing, like I explained, it's not about her sleeping with people. Even the huge portion of /v/ agrees that's not the issue.
The issue is her framing and crashing a campaign that was, for all accounts, legitimately trying to do something nice for women wanting to get into gaming and pulling strings and playing the professional victim.
But I think what saddens me the most is when she attacked Wizardchan, a website filled with people who suffer the exact same type of anxiety that she made a game about. She, of all people, should know how mean-spirited that sounds, and how hypocritical. Not only that but she got positive coverage for it, and help and praise on twitter.
Because the only reason she was in a position to do that in the first place was because she slept her way to the top.
....and, apparently, bringing that up is a no no here because.... reasons.
I don't think that's the case. Most of what doesn't get laughed out of the room immediately (which I agree is rooted in either misogyny or simple voyeurism) is people's real concerns about things like how she used her visibility to harm a similarly motivated group for helping women enter the gaming industry. Simply dismissing any and all concerns about a public figure because there are extreme reactions among them isn't how interactions like this go, either in how we should want them to or how they actually tend to play out.
It's fascinating to see the wagons circling around everyone who dares to utter an opinion. I used to think "SJW" was a made up bullshit term used by "ironic" racists and sexists but after the absolute depths some of these "journalists" have gone to to cover for a woman who by all rights has done some pretty heinous and sociopathic things publicly and privately I start to wonder. I hope this is just another example of the games media being a shitty clique filled with shitty people, because no one should have to seriously consider the merits of a term like SJW.
Beacause... There's zero proof of her "sleeping her way to the top"? And it's a familiar narrative concerning visible and influential women, a way to dismiss their legitimacy.
Dr_LucienSanchez
Banned
I honestly can't believe that somebody would actually write this.
Pack it in, folks! All manner of academic critique or any other type of well thought-out critique not focusing on the 'big problems' is basically worthless!
Concern trolling at its apex.
Not that it's an appt comparasion but people did care about the max tempkin situation.
If anything I think this really shows what a tight knit community the indie gaming scene is and with bloggers.
This whole thing has had shades of grey all over it.
How exactly did she crash that campaign? Did she do something other than that video of tweets?
92%. 8% of profits is being given to the woman who submitted the idea for the winning game. Said woman also gets rights to the game and all concept art created from it.
Disgaeamad
Member
These are very good posts that're worth everyone's time. Also, it's somewhat telling about the general attitude here when marrec has done nothing but stir the pot in this thread and remains untouched while people who have posted completely harmless opinions have been banned.
Encouraged and participated in the DDosing of the site. I actually saved an image of her twitter posts in image form http://i.imgur.com/lzy5r5d.jpg the comments are not from me by the way.
Also an image from the point of view of one of the persons running the campaign
So far the evidence seems against Zoe so that is where I stand on the subject
you watched the video right? The fact that she casually says "whoops DDOSed them accidently" and the fact that she didn't even read the full print of the campaign at all saying the women were working for free when they weren't. She crashed it because this campaign was a small upstart one that she made some stupid comments about and even like I said went "Whoops I ddosed them" and didn't even bat a freaking eyelash. The way twiiter goes is once someone of higher follower count says something it's apparently sacred and should never be questioned.
Entryhazard
Banned
Actually there's evidence that she slept with a judge of a contest she won, so the suspicion isn't exactly baseless.
EmCeeGramr
Member
Apparently the influx of people visiting the website after seeing Quinn and her friends mention it caused it to temporarily overload and crash.
She criticized their trans policy (that video and picture leave out the part where their trans policy originally stated that you had to "transition" before a certain date to qualify, which is vague to either mean a lot of things from simply self-identifying [which is what TFYC claim was their intent and changed the page to clarify after Quinn tweeted about it] to outright reassignment surgery [which is clearly what Quinn believed they were talking about, given her references to 'bottom surgery' in her tweets].)
Apparently one of Quinn's followers found the organizer's Facebook page somehow and was concerned that it had a casting call for a female actor to appear in a video (I guess they assumed it was evidence that TFYC was a scam with actors?) and one of Quinn's associates retweeted it. TFYC apparently blamed this on Zoe and insists that it was a totally separate project.
From what I can tell, the project just didn't attract that much interest at first, Zoe heard about it months ago and either through misunderstandings or honest ideological differences assumed that it was wrong and spent an afternoon criticizing it. Months later she finds out that a bunch of things that she never directly did or wanted to do (like how somehow it's all Zoe's fault that journalists didn't cover TFYC and no other possible reason) are being blamed on her, so she just tweets that she disagreed with their trans policies and tweeted a few times, prompting GOTCHA YOU TWEETED A LOT THAT DAY responses.
Frankly, while I'm sure that their head is probably in the right place, I do have my doubts about the project. $65,000 seems like a rather low goal when you don't even know which game you're going to make yet, ranging in genre and scope as the candidates are. (it also raises questions about backer rewards, since I'm not seeing how the iPhone multiplayer air hockey title is going to fit fan-made character designs and a boxed copy of a PC/Mac version).
I also have misgivings when their official Tumblr is saying things like
http://thefineyoungcapitalists.tumblr.com/post/95606074710/what-do-you-think-is-a-better-method-of-creating said:
http://thefineyoungcapitalists.tumblr.com/post/95552611315/to-be-honest-i-dont-care-that-there-arent-many-women said:
"Evidence".
Also it wouldn't matter much if she did sleep with a guy who judged some award you can't even remember the name of because you would then have to assume that she did it solely for the purposes of winning this amazing award that no one cares about.
In Zoe's defense, comments in this thread and the twitter posts lead me to think Zoe either jumped to conclusions or saw that it wasn't actually empowering a woman by getting her trained in game development skills or directly putting her into a position to do so. Honestly, the indiegogo campaign essentially looks like charity + a game show element of choosing the idea to develop. From the tweets, I lean on her jumping to conclusion and throwing excessive force at the group.
Entryhazard
Banned
The evidence is a recording of her actual admission of sleeping with him (do I have to link that?).
Her game was given an IndieCade award if you want to know the name.
shacklesmcgee
Member
Good post overall, but the quoted isn't really true. Schafer tweeted the Tropes video saying everyone should watch it, JonTron tweeted at him with a strawman about being a "savage", and all Schafer said back was "That last one made me sad. From a guy with 1.2M YouTube subscribers." I wouldn't say Schafer ousted him.
QuickSilverD
Member
I don't see anything particularly wrong with these post unless you want to claim that men and women are 100% equal and any perceivable difference is only "social".
As for TFYC project thing, it certainly looks like its goal of 65,000 is a little too low to make anything decent, whatever it may end up being, but I'm no game developer so what do I know?
Fair enough, It mostly two saddens me because it's two personalities I really like, and I know both of them don't have any mean, sexist or racist bones in their body. And having these two collide in such a manner just added some unnecessary oil on the fire which did some needless damage. It's still frightening the effect that one tweet can have, which is mostly my (possibly paranoid, I can admit) fear
But thanks for the heads up !
EmCeeGramr
Member
Which year was this? Because IndieCade takes place in October, and the only mention that I can find of Depression Quest is a nomination/featured game back in 2013, which would be months before anything is supposed to have taken place between Quinn and this judge.
I'm more of the mind that if you're going to bring in anatomical and/or genetic differences then that enters the thorny world of trans politics, and the second line about "genetic differences that define the human race"... I may be just jumpy from reading too much PZ Myers and other science blogs in the last couple month, but it brings up connotations that I hope are wrong.
(although yes, making the blanket statement that there can never be true equality, without any clarification as to what "things" each gender is supposed to "better" at, is worrisome given that that thinking has been used to justify separate roles for men and women, even if guy running the Tumblr insists that these roles don't matter and should be challenge)
Thanks for the summary.
shacklesmcgee
Member
Can you link the "evidence", I can't find anything?
No problem, it's a weird situation, everyone lashing out on someone else's behalf.
flatearthpandas
Member
Sounds like the organization had a pretty rough time and then 4chan stepped in to fund the project and designed an inoffensive character to be included.
Awful article.
Awful article.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
I don't agree, we had reports over Fish saying "your games suck" to a japanese dev, which in contrast to trying to ruin a female gaming initiative over wrong facts seems almost laughable. Yeah, Quinn is not Fish (in terms of popularity), and twitter is not the GDC, but we can say that, yeah, journalists care when devs are being jerks.
That said, you certainly got a point, people losed the opportunity to make this an actual new, when it was born from shameless slut shaming. The whole notion that Quinn is in the position she is because she fucked 5 guys is repulsive and by making that argument everything else that comes from that is moot (lol did you see what I did there?).
There's nepotism in the gaming journaslism? I don't fucking now, but the notion that Quinn is somehow the queen of the indie scene thanks to her magic pussy is deplorable, and barely makes sense as long you know how the real world works.
Quinn is in the position she is in, because people harassed her, she's a voice to be heard in the indie scene, she knows ppl in the industry, she made way more contacts, because some assholes harassed here. That's the cold true. She gained some notoriety before thanks to her game, sure, but people harassing here, made her a voice to be heard on a industry that wants more women to be heard, she got the wrong board (sue her), but those assholes are the one that put her in the top, not her pussy, it was those assholes.
And now her opinions are important enough that she can be a jerk to a woman gaming initiative and block it from even truly starting. And no one cares, because mysoginistic asshole made a crusade around her on the fact she was sleeping with guys and some stupid conspiracy.
ab.aeterno
Member
Ah, yeah, if that was your intention I didn't pick up on that. It probably didn't help that the other two posts I was quoting were giving their opinions; I probably read it as something similar. Thanks for clarifying that. To be clear, I'm not trying to trivialize anything. I don't condone nasty, brutish behavior, regardless of if their views line up with mine or not. Unless the person in question is spewing some truly vile shit, I'd rather people attack an argument, not the person behind it.
Anyways, I think it's fair to say that it's a term that is fairly loaded for people, and it's differing definitions among people make it a sticking point in most conversations.
carry on.Entryhazard
Banned
Or, again, Quinn's own admission?
if you don't trust the pic there are means to verify it (look at the quotes)
just like "phil fish hacked himself" is the conclusion they reach because someone capitalized /v/
SERIOUSLY
as if it wouldn't be someone trying to deflect blame onto that community
or off of that community
but somehow the actual thing they come up with is "she made up this harassment", "he hacked himself", etc
it's RIDICULOUS
Uh, that says accident doesn't it? Does anytime GAF links to a small website and we kill it, are we DDOSing it? Unless she actually was attempting to do it on purpose, that's not at all what those quotes are suggesting.
I mean, she's being a dick, but that doesn't strike me as the direct intent to sabotage the website.