Calling what the average game rag when writing about this sort of stuff clickbait and extremist seems a bit disingenuous. Unless you're just referring to the past week, which I don't agree with, but could see why someone would. But it sounds like you're fed up with for a long time and I'd like to see examples of what you mean by click bait and extremist articles.
#GAMERGATE: The Threadening [Read the OP] -- #StopGamerGate2014
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boogie2988
Banned
thank you Mr. Pink. I am trying my best, though if the feedback I'm getting here, my best isnt very good.
I just hope all people know that my heart is in the right place, even if I'm not as capable of communicating that as I wish I was.
I don't have time to list all the stupid jokes about black people, gay people, rape jokes and the like that I have seen in guild chats over the last nearly 10 years that have been defended by guild leaders as being "just jokes". A stalker and a rape+murder threat on Vent mid-raid are my personal highlights however.
Again with this strawman!
boogie2988
Banned
Spending very little time coming up with these examples so please forgive me if they are not perfect.
"Is skyrim just a rape simulator" would be a click bait title. Even if skyrim includes several rape scenes in its vast landscape, its certainly not that.
"Skyrim includes a rape scene" would still get clicks, without making the game or the people who play it look bad. You'd still get to discuss the topic without going to an extreme.
Again I can't tell minorities how to discuss anything. I wouldn't dare.
But I would like to ask all fellow humans to keep a level head and discuss things in a civilized moderate way, because that's the only way you'll ever influence people.
moondoggerr
Banned
Let's turn this around. Are you telling me that the majority of women gamers are console/pc gamers? Because that would be interesting.
boogie2988
Banned
I have played at max level on at least 5 different servers in several different guilds. Same thing each time.
I have a character in one of the top raiding guilds in the world. I always see rape jokes when I logon.
The Silver
Member
all everyone is asking is for you to simply drop the gamergate hashtag as it's a poisoned well. Your good message well only get obsfucated, or worse, seen as disingenuous because its attached to a hashtag with so much negative baggage.
at the very least you should do what Jason suggested and denounce to hateful public leaders that use the hashtag.
boogie2988
Banned
I invite you to serverswap to proudmoore when/if you play again. I believe you'd love it there. I don't know if its changed much, but last time I logged in basically no one said ANYTHING much less make a bunch of rape jokes.
He has quite obviously stated many, many times that he does not support the notion that games media shouldn't talk about such issues. Boogie's position seems very clear and you only need to watch his YouTube video to see that.
Boogie using the hashtag to represent gamers such as myself is clearly (as he has said many times) in support of moderates.
boogie2988
Banned
Nope, pretty sure I am using it correctly.
I don't have a US account.
boogie2988
Banned
Yes, I get that, and again, the motive here seems pure and genuine, but the results are not. Someone else ITT brought up my favorite analogy so far (sorry, I forget who) -- it's like fighting for government transparency under the banner of 911 truthers. By attaching yourself to a radical cause, you're diminishing your own logical, moderate argument.
MHWilliams
Member
Yeah, so your problem is with the more incendiary language. I get you.
Like I said, I feel you're a bit misguided with the hashtag (for the reasons Jason points out), but you seem like a nice enough guy. Good on the tweet as well.
that's a shame I think it would be great to get a chance to play with you.
Aww, you softy you.
I don't think anyone really doubts that your heart is in the right place, but as many people in thread have already said you are going about this the wrong way. Continuing to associate with the #GamersGate tag would be like standing next to the Westboro Baptist at a soldier's funeral because you have some legitimate grievances with American foreign policy.
Gsak
Member
I have a question for all, pro GamerGate, against it or neutral/skeptical of both:
If all the screengrabs "with red lines", diagrams with arrows, videos made by youtubers speaking on the subject are not proof, not even evidence, then why should Zoe's screengrabs and video recordings of IRC chats be treated any different?
P.S. Boogie, I want you to know, that you are one hell of a guy and I respect you, both because you speak your honest mind and because you are a reminder that there are decent people in gaming. Thanks for your work man. Also, send Francis all my love. And a box of king-size steaks.
https://twitter.com/MsMinotaur/status/508398223933706241
It seems there's the #gameethics hashtag now, if you don't like where #gamergate came from and want to discuss game ethics stuff.
EDIT: sorry if old :/ I'm trying to keep up now lol
It seems there's the #gameethics hashtag now, if you don't like where #gamergate came from and want to discuss game ethics stuff.
EDIT: sorry if old :/ I'm trying to keep up now lol
And by trying to get people like Boogie to remove himself from using the hashtag you are just further radicalising the movement. The hash tag reaches thousands of normal individuals, there is not a better hashtag in use to achieve that goal.
Someone like Boogie has a lot of influence and if people see him using the hashtag the right way then more are likely to do it that way too.
I think "you're tone policing!" is a "fallacy fallacy" - just because someone uses a fallacy to make an argument, doesn't mean their argument is entirely invalid. Negativity rarely adds something constructive to a discussion. Everyone is free to make whatever argument they want, but if they make it with a hostile tone it is bound to attract hostility in response.
Hypothetical scenario. I want to tell someone that they're acting in a way that is detrimental to the representation of women. I could say:
1) "You're a fucking misogynist pig neckbeard for doing X because [reason]"
2) "This thing you're doing is insensitive and problematic, here's why [reason]"
(or anything in between those two extremes)
Which one is more likely to "get through" to a person and educate them? Here's a discussion on the issue: http://lesswrong.com/lw/dp4/in_defense_of_tone_arguments/
Or this: http://lucereta.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/tone-argument-as-logical-fallacy/
moondoggerr
Banned
http://developers.magmic.com/demographic-breakdown-casual-mid-core-hard-core-mobile-gamers/
One more link. All I'm saying is, look at the mid-core and hardcore graphs. To me, that suggests that as soon as we leave the casual space, the amount of women gamers drops precipitously. I think at least part of the reason for that is that midcore and hardcore games (and the culture that surrounds them) are not particularly welcoming to women.
You say that's your goal, but your response is to attack the people who have most put themselves out there for that very goal. A movement supposedly for journalistic integrity that is turning women like Jenn Frank and Mattie Price into the face of corruption in the gaming industry.
Do you see how this can be taken badly?
boogie2988
Banned
I can't speak for anyone else but I think all of the screenshotting and 'evidence' is a big circlejerk.
I don't disagree that zoe is being harassed and I won't disagree that her exboyfriend is the cause of it and has attached himself to #gamergate. Likewise I don't doubt that many people who would ally themselves with equality or kindness are also up to no good.
I just think that anyone posting screenshots and all this stuff is stupid. I don't care about 'exacts' or 'absolutes'. I don't care about Obama's birth certificate.
What I care about are the issues as a whole, because I am a critical thinker. This has gotten me vilified quite often during this debate but I can't change who I am.
boogie2988
Banned
I reject that idea that this tweet is 'attacking' anyone simply because it uses the hashtag gamergate
In fact, I would invite you to find a single instance of me 'attacking' another human being in my entire internet existance, other than in jest by saying something sarcastically. I'll donate 100 dollars to your favorite charity if you are successful.
I am largely unfamiliar with the writings of Jenn Frank and have no real opinion about her, but my heart absolutely goes out to her and what has happened to her is very unfortunate.
RyanPierre
Member
No, I'm not telling you that the majority of women gamers are console/pc gamers because I don't know the statistics. You're the one making this sort of claim, and I'd love to see it substantiated. I'm merely interested in the truth, and I'd love to see a study on the breakdown of women gaming habits.
You'll have to excuse me for being skeptical about your statement about the vast majority of women gamers, but I tend to question claims that I find a little hard to believe. If you don't actually know what portion of women gamers play smartphone games for hours, that's fine. But your original statement certainly looked to me as though you were stating a fact - which is something, in that case, that I would like substantiated - especially since I think the gaming platform/habits within the female gaming community would be really interesting to get some insight into.
Metroidvania
People called Romanes they go the house?
True, but the point of the 'shut up and listen' was addressed at us (us being the male gamer) is that we don't tend to see a lot of the same problems/issues in female game representation that are currently being over-used.
No one should be telling you that you have to be quiet, but there is some merit in recognizing that women see a lot more of the marginalization aspect in video games than men do, which, honestly, is all that Anita's really doing.
No one should be telling you that your perspective isn't valuable in the overall cultural discussion of video games, but at the same time, when a woman says "hey, do you guy developers think you could tone it down a bit on the whole", it shouldn't be something that's attempting to be silenced like it is by a lot of vocal assholes.
Do people really find Anita Sarkeesian click baity? She just says, here are some things to look at it. Women are not represented very well. It would be cool if it was better. She doesn't say gamers are sexist jerks. She says this doesn't mean the games are bad. What's the fuss?
moondoggerr
Banned
I think skepticism is important, so I have no problem with it in this case. I think we are discussing this in good faith. My belief that more women play smartphone games than other games comes from articles like this : http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/more-women-than-teenagers-are-now-gamers-9704495.html
- which contain passages like this: "The spike in the number female gamers is linked to the growing use of smartphones - women are more likely to play games on their mobile devices, according to a Nielsen study reported in the Wall Street Journal."
But I haven't read the Nielsen study being cited. In other words: I'm probably completely wrong!
Steve Youngblood
Member
To a lesser extent, there's always the problem that by just dumping snippets out of context, the result can be either wantonly misleading or simply not tell the whole story. Even Zoe's tweets and images can arguably be accused of doing that. It's the nature of this type of a situation where multiple parties and groups are all playing a role. To really tell the story of just what happened here requires a long form story that would take a long time to prepare (if done right).
To Quinn's credit, I think the interspersing of the text logs and the Tweets works well together to tell a story and substantiate her claims. But again, I'm not really looking to seem unfair here. I understand why some may think that these posts are either: A.) out of context, or B.) misunderstand that the people named there don't represent everyone involved with the movement.
But aside from that, I mainly just dislike seeing big, not-immediately-clear pieces of new media dropped with no explanation. Like the rule about "crazy-person" tweets in the OP has to do with the fact that some of these twitter collages really do nothing but obfuscate the issue. I'm not about to go looking for it, but one such giant image I saw linked was downright unreadable. There was no clear flow or purpose to it at all: I didn't know what I was looking at. The other problem is linking overly long videos and saying "you need to watch this" or "this video makes some good points." I don't want to suggest that linking a lengthy commentary video is against our Terms of Service, but 20+ minute videos deserve some explanation as to why they deserve a viewing: who created it, what are their credentials, what are the highlights of the video, etc.
Alex
Member
Proudmoore, at least when I played, was an extremely good server, one of the best I had ever been on. I've played MMOs since Ultima Online and I do not think I have seen as friendly of a community... At least from my anecdotal experience.
My guild in particular was LBGT friendly, I'm straight personally but I joined due to the raiding positioning and schedule, but goodness that was THE best gaming community I had ever been a part of. Everyone was extremely polite, helpful, friendly, it was wonderful.
The WoW community had tons of foibles and faults, but good lord do I miss it compared to the mess that I'm stuck with in FFXIV.
Can I ask you to read this? https://plus.google.com/+MatiasDuarte/posts/DX3iPvqM19V
It's a bit long but it address the topic directly. I think looking at the issue *as a whole* is a good idea.
boogie2988
Banned
I have no clue who leigh alexander is at the moment. I presume she's one of the people that wrote an article along that lines? I meant it in general, and not directly. If I had directed it to her then I would see your point.
But I love giving to charity so i see no point in arguing the finer points.
Pre-edit: I see Steve seemed to think you were asking about rules for posting. I took you as asking about why one is conspiratorial garbage and the other isn't. Take whichever you like.
I've only spent a little time looking at either, but they seem like pretty different kinds of information to me.
So, like, there was that video about the IGF awards being rigged. It spends a lot of time trying to establish this web of connections (actually, first it spends a lot of time trying to make sure we're convinced that some Aaron guy is in fact some Aaron guy because he's an authoritative source on this web of connections or something). But that's not the interesting part! The point of the video is (iirc) to get viewers to think that some woman who's sleeping with the guy who runs IGF is actually the one rigging the awards on the basis of which developers pay her or sleep with her. But there's really no evidence at all presented that this is what's going on; it's basically just speculation from the web of connections. That's classic red-lines conspiracy-theorizing - the theorist sees these real relationships and attaches bizarre significance to them, producing convoluted explanations for how the relationships reveal the Truth.
You see this with lots of other conspiracy theories. Go watch a 9/11 Truther video and you'll see them spend a huge amount of time on basic, uncontroversial facts, as if that's what's in question. Then they propose some really implausible explanation for the set of facts and act like the existence of the set of facts is good evidence for their explanation. Benghazi videos likewise spend an enormous amount of time going over mostly uncontroversial details of what happened.
The IRC logs are quite different. They don't show that some 4channers went to middle school with Adam Baldwin's neighbor, therefore conspiracy. They're just chat logs of people conspiring. There's going to be room to question to what extent they were successful and deceived about their own success, but this is way more support than what you get with conspiracy theories. It's uncontroversial (to my knowledge) that there were people conspiring to attempt to make what happened happen, and the plan here was detailed enough (specifically naming Baldwin, for example, though I think they confused him with Alec) that it seems like it would be very surprising for events to have happened as they did if these people had no influence whatsoever. And the aim here seems to be only to establish that #gamergate was never really about journalism ethics or the various 'gamer' articles, which people who were paying attention already knew given that it started before the articles were published and was first tweeted as essentially an anti-Quinn tag.
I agree, what she did was catch some people involved with the tag, wanting to do it to discredit people they disagree with.
However, it is still all feeding the beast.
http://topsy.com/analytics?q1=#gamergate&q2=#notyourshield&q3=#gameethics&via=Topsy
This infers, to me, that this is a train that needs to be allowed to run its course and be left alone. People really need to stop poking it, it literally isn't working, in fact it is helping. All movements thrive on controversy, people who even remotely agree with some of the points being talked about will jump on board, which means more people who dont like it will poke, new people even, which will fuel it some more.
Like seriously, we were all so close to having this twitter drama in the rear-view mirror... And now it is fucking back. So congrats I guess, everyone loses.
The irony is it didn't even win an award. It was exhibited in the "Night Games" show which is to show some weird games that aren't even part of the real competition. It certainly didn't 'beat out Papers Please' which I keep hearing.
I wrote some stuff here directly addressing why one is better than the other but the mods did a much better job of saying it than I did, so I'm glad I refreshed the thread before hitting submit reply, because I can cut it.
So, that which follows, does so from my gut sense that the "redline" stuff is all reaching for unjustifiable conclusions whereas the chat logs are legit is this:
The stuff Zoe released today should be damning to anyone who's upset legit upset about game journalism ethics; it looks to me, having read a stack of it, like people are literally using anyone who cares about journalism or the word gamer, rather openly, as cover to go after their real explicit targets: Zoe, Anita, and anyone else who dares be critical of sex/gender/race/representation in gaming.
At this point, I recommend anyone who wants to be taken seriously as genuinely interested in the ethics of game journalism should probably take a couple weeks to think through what in particular is bothering them, do some research and write some compelling essays. Do some actual journalism about it! Figure out exactly what kind of press you want to see.
I see a lot of "tone policing" here from #gamergate-aligned people, and I suppose what I'm doing is a kind of tone-policing, but instead of tone it's temporal: I think people will be much more interested in the actual topic of game journalism and ethics once there's room for this to actually be about that instead of being a conversation directly in the wake of, and intermingled with, a serious campaign of harassment.
Game journalism will still exist in a few weeks and still be ripe for criticism, and hopefully people will be ready to engage on the topic in a calmer manner then.
Rather than just focusing on debating the merits of him using or not using the hashtag, could you comment or respond to the actual content of his message? Do you think there is any merit in what he and others are saying about the state of games journalism; about how many in the audience feel there is a disingenuous or cynical side to the usage of sensationalized headlines, or headlines and articles made to incite fervor and antagonism? And the sentiment that news should be reported without judgement or framing, letting the reader come to their own opinions?
tiredheadcrab
Member
I do agree here. From what i gather you are saying both sides are using images to sort of tell a story and that may not be the whole story, and doesnt represent whats being shown. Atleast not entirely.
IDK if it helps the situation but makes it a little harder to understand. I follow some girls who are gamers, using the hash tag as well so maybe for everyone the hashtag has a different meaning.
In the end it will probably die down. The discussion i think would benefit when everyones nerves are calm.
It WAS dying down... Any now it has skyrocketed, past its highest point. So ya... This is going to be awhile.
MHWilliams
Member
Not much to argue with because most news is straightforward and most headlines are just there.
Again, you're trying to pull a few headlines out of the thousands that go up each day and say "bad journalists".
Here's Polygon's News Page. What's bothering you there? Gamasutra. GameInformer. Just picking at random.
I believe the evidence that the problems you state are widespread isn't backed up by the reality. So we're starting from different points of view. Even if you're calm and moderate, I still contend that by-and-large, games journalism isn't anywhere near as bad as the tag is making out. Are there issues? Sure. And we can certainly discuss those. But widespread corruption? Nope.
Steve Youngblood
Member
To be clear, what I'm saying is that it can be argued that such methodologies for relaying facts do present opportunities for skeptics/opponents to question the validity of the presentation. But stepping outside of the realm of discussing generalities, I will say Gotchaye did a much better job than me of addressing the specifics of this situation, and I agree with what he said.
However, I am willing to hear out cries of double-standards. But that doesn't mean that I don't think Quinn's presentation of the 4chan logs was actually better presented and corroborated (provided you don't think she edited the logs) than some of the evidence I've seen presented.
This is why I kind of agree with Leigh Alexander's article. I don't think the enthusiast game community online is chock full of bad people. However, this is the culture that fomented the overreaction about Jeff Gerstmann's 8.9 Twilight Princess score. Gamers are very passionate about their games. Say one thing bad about a favorite game and you'll find a whole bunch of people responding harshly with over-reactionary tones. I think a lot of gamers can't take criticism very well and they seem to assume that criticism equals the owner of that criticism not liking game or saying the game isn't worth the time. Basically a lot of passion combined with a lot of assumptions.
And a large part of it is because of the relationship journalists historically have with the publishers. Gamers have been so conditioned to seeing positive things being printed about their favorite games.
Now, take a bunch of guys from that environment and tell them that they actually have privileges they weren't aware of and that it's being exemplified in the games they play. I wonder what will happen.
These are all gripes about journalism in 2014, period, and there isn't enough real news or money in gaming journalism to have the kind of Economist or New Yorker style largely click-bait immune, largely well-researched, meticulously fact-checked kind of journalism that people seem to be asking for.
There's also the point that presenting things in an "unbiased" fashion is deeply boring and no one actually wants that. They want good, passionate journalism from journalists they know the biases of! I read John Gruber's Apple coverage, and I know he is very tight with Apple (though does not accept gifts from them nor own stock and pays his own way to their keynotes etc) and is deeply fond of them, but because of that he's also absolutely one of the most consistently insightful writers about Apple.
(Now I'm afraid that simply because I mentioned Apple, people are going to miss the point because of their own strong feelings pro or con about Apple, but such is life.)
I'm not saying it's great that that's the way things are, and I personally try to avoid reading or clicking on obvious clickbait myself.
MHWilliams
Member
Gruber is great. I read Daring Fireball and I don't even have any Apple products.
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