This thread is boring as all hell now, but I've got a question for the more active participants.
Is there anyone who regularly contributes to this thread who isn't a young white guy?
Hi.
Just from reading this thread, I've noticed several recurring Gamergate arguments that tend to come up. I think it would be neat if a journo wrote an article discussing and debating these.
“Not all Gamergate is bad! Gamergate is about ethics!”
My answers to these in order:
GamerGate is a disparate hydra. The lack of clear organization or leadership means that anyone who does something under the hashtag is just as representative of the movement as anyone else. This is the same problem Occupy had.
Now there is a big problem with a number of named influencers - IA for example - have views that are considered hate and these influencers are pushed to the top of the movement. But to cut them out would require an organized group. And the current form of GamerGate relies on aiming all those various voices - some of whom are quite incendiary and hateful - in one direction.
- “The other side is just as bad!”
There is no other side. Let me illustrate.
#GG is an actual banner that people have placed themselves under. It is a thing. Outside of #GG, there's everyone else. People who for whatever reason, have not placed themselves under the #GG banner. Now outside of the movement, there are people who intensely dislike GG, represented by the more colorful side of the gradient, but they (currently) aren't an actual organized group.
Have some who stand against #GG become as bad as those they oppose in tone and action? Certainly. But they are, as of now, not "the other side".
- “Playing video games doesn’t make me a bad person!”
Of course not. And someone saying they don't like the games you play for various reason doesn't make you or them a bad person either.
- “We’re not arguing against what these people are saying, we just want them to say it in a nicer way!”
I can see this, but past history has taught me that many just don't want it said at all.
- “These women did these bad things! Do the research!”
Even looking into these bad things, most of the accusations either don't check out or are wildly exaggerated. Certainly, they've done far, far less than the huge outrage in return.
- “We need to find a middle ground!”
With #GamerGate not having clear organizational goals, I'm not sure of what the middle ground is. Ethics in journalism? Okay, as I've said before, we can always have that talk. Objectivity and removal of "agendas" from the writing?
I've written about that before. Twice.
- “We just need to stop talking about this!”
About #GamerGate? Uh, sure? As, Damion Schubert pointed out,
a consumer group is a good idea. #GamerGate just isn't it right now. They would have to cut some people.
I strongly disagree with you. A review is a two part piece of writing, the first larger portion of a review is a recitation of facts and findings regarding measurable/observable qualities. Number of defects, quality of graphics in regards to advertised quality, whether or not advertised features are present and in working order, etc. This is not opinion, it is an assessment.
The second, and generally much smaller part, is opinion. The simple statement of whether or not it is fun and why.
Most of those can be found on the press release, meaning you don't really need a review. A game runs at 1080p and 60fps is an objective fact. "This game looks good" is a subjective opinion.
A review is one person's comprehensive word on their experience with a product.
We can see ready examples of how the corruption in Journalism has caused the first portion to never be covered.
Ah, corruption in journalism. Okay, let's dig in.
-Mass Effect 3 developers spent months insisting that ME3's best ending could be achieved without multiplayer. On release it was found that multiplayer was required to achieve the best ending, yet I never came across a review that mentioned that, even though it is a major purchasing decision point for many.
Then after release, for weeks, Bioware left a sticky at the top of their board asserting the best ending could be achieved without multiplayer, even when it was demonstrated false, until one day they just let it disappear. No sites reported on this.
I assume you're talking Destruction with 4000+ EMS? You get 10 seconds of extra footage, and that's before we even get inot the idea that Synthesis was probably the "best outcome" overall.
But again, we run into the issue of treating the games media as a single entity.
http://www.pcgamer.com/mass-effect-3-review/
In singleplayer, everything you do accumulates 'war assets'. When you finish the game, how many of these you have determines how good an ending you get: how well the final fight goes for your side. Success in co-op multiplies your war assets, up to twice their normal value. That means that if you only play singleplayer, or want to finish singleplayer first, you'll have to grind the living hell out of its most tedious fetch quests to get the best ending.
These quests generally involve scouring the galaxy for a planet someone mentioned, scanning it, then returning to the Citadel. I did every proper quest I could find, but didn't play multiplayer and skipped most of these empty FedEx ones. The ending I got... I won't say how, but it could have gone a lot better.
http://www.rpgamer.com/games/masseffect/masseffect3/reviews/masseffect3strev1.html
There are a couple issues to address. One is that paragon and renegade options don't really have the same impact as they once did, mainly because this is the finale and things have to end, so leaving plot points hanging is no longer an option. There are still a few key decisions to make, but they are they are much less subtle and the consequences are much more obvious. The other more painful issue is that the ending is really awful. It is unsatisfying, plain and simple. Of course there are choices to make, and paragon and renegade options do factor in, but when it comes down to it, all of the endings are pretty bad. Despite having completed most everything possible in the campaign, there is the possibility that not playing enough multiplayer could be a factor in not getting the best ending. Regardless of what might be possible in a standard playthrough, of the three different endings witnessed none of them were as grand as the rest of the game. The best moments in Mass Effect 3 happen hours before the credits.
http://www.gamesradar.com/mass-effect-3-review/
When the credits rolled after 40 hours invested (and, of course the 40 hours invested in ME2…and 40 hours in the original), we felt like we didn’t really have all that much impact on the overall finale, and that was a slight letdown. The ending was tempered to how high our Galactic Readiness was, but that's not really the same as being driven by choices, as a large chunk of the Readiness is tied to multiplayer and scanning countless planets for additional assets. It was still a tremendous, amazing, phenomenal achievement in interactive storytelling, and the ride to that conclusion is unforgettably wonderful, but it falls just short of the expectations when it comes to interactivity, especially when you consider the nearly five years and scores of hours that BioWare built up. It's disappointing to see that after all of the emotional investment in choices, the fate of the galaxy is decided by how much you can collect.
-ME3's infamous color endings after we were told that choices matter. What did the Journalists do? Attack us for questioning their reviews that failed to mention it.
I've always found this one interesting because I certainly believe feedback is a big part of the development process. But some people need to pick one. Either the developer's vision is completely sacrosanct (meaning the Mass Effect 3 ending should've stayed) or the players and press should provide feedback and criticism to developers (meaning changes are possible).
-Reportedly, Skyrim on the PS3 wasn't playable after a certain number of hours. Reportedly none of the initial reviews mentioned that you couldn't play the game after a certain amount of time.
As far as I can tell,
no major outlet played the game on PS3. You wish for them to review a game they didn't play?
-Then we have Journalists like Liana K(?) stating she skews her reviews so developers don't miss their bonuses. Never mind that person or kid who buys the only game he/she can afford for a month or two based on that review, it's ok for the customer to be screwed out of money so long as her developer friends get their bonus.
So don't read GamingExcellence? (A site I hadn't heard of until now.) What does Liana K have to do with me, or Jim Sterling, or Kirk Hamilton, or whoever else reviews games? Again, part of the problem many seem to have is trying to extrapolate more insidious and widespread actions out of very little. Liana K openly decides to change her review scores, so that's everyone's issues? I don't like the idea - the game is the game for me - but you could simply not read her reviews.
If the reviewer received an all expenses paid trip with entertainment and/or then received special physical goods with significant ebay values as part of the review process, this needs to be stated right at the top of the article. The consumer needs to know if the reviewer was the recipient of gifts in the process of assessing the measurable qualities of the product. In fact, I believe that is law. We're walking a very fine line on the FTC requirements for disclosure and the Payola laws, and I strongly suspect that if/when this is placed in front of a court that it's going to be found in violation.
Disclosure is awesome. Certainly have no issues with that.
What is placed in front of a court? Again, we're veering off here.
I say "When" because with the increasing amount of attention it is only a matter of time before the legal system starts taking a look at what is happening with "Journalism" in games. Part of the price of being a several billion dollar a year industry is that when you're doing something sketchy lawyers, ambulance chasers, politicians, and real investigative journalists start paying attention to what you're doing because breaking the story can boost their career enourmously.
The same thing that's happening with journalism everywhere.
This whole "Opinion" thing that the gaming journalists have been trying to push for awhile now is easily demonstrated to be untrue, and is equally easily demonstrated to be harming consumers.
I'm not even sure where you're going here.