Anton Sugar
Member
Gotcha, I think I misunderstood--sounds like his concern was more for dragging trash from that site into this thread/discussion, and not necessarily about the association itself.
#GAMERGATE: The Threadening [Read the OP] -- #StopGamerGate2014
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Gotcha, I think I misunderstood--sounds like his concern was more for dragging trash from that site into this thread/discussion, and not necessarily about the association itself.
NoCryingUntilTheEnd
Banned
Hmm, guess I was wrong. Not the brightest idea on his part, but we'll see how it pans out I guess.
Completely okay with the two of them. For the most part, I probably wouldn't care for reviewers that took stuff like that into account when reviewing a game, but I would have no problem with them existing as they're taking a different look at games and I believe that that could be a good thing.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
Man, this site. This god damn site. Holy shit. I wont bother you anymore but these headlines are just...awesome. Seriously, are we sure this isn't an offspin of The Onion?
Holy shit. I can see why GG would endorse them, they seem pretty legit.
Holy shit. I can see why GG would endorse them, they seem pretty legit.
Yeah it sounds like a step backward to me too. Frankly I don't even bother reading those kind of reviews much any more, I can get most of that information form a quick video.
Anton Sugar
Member
Agreed. I'd like to think that interview did more harm than good for #GamerGate, but they seem to be rallying behind it.
PumpkinSpice
Banned
the only problem i see with this is that this mentality is very near to the core of the bigotry and hatred that need to get stamped out of the community. People clinging to this core gamer identity have decided that they're the true community that should get to dictate how the industry develops (which is a ludicrous assertion, obviously) and also they've taken it upon themselves to defend certain aspects of the industry from the criticism of those they consider outsiders (in this case women, feminists, "SJWs" and anyone who disagrees with them).
What I really want to know is 1) how we're going to get rid of these people, and 2) where they're going to go and what kind of heinous shit they're going to get up to when they get there.
In direct opposition to Total Biscuit, I honestly feel gamergate is throwing me to the wolves. Since the Five Guys crusade I keep finding myself thinking, "If this is the new gaming culture... UGH FUCK THIS"
And then to see organized efforts to literally shut down some of my favorite gaming sites and writers under the banner of ethics in gaming journalism. There are not enough WTFs in the world.
robovanburen
Member
And I won't forget that TB saw a wave of harassment and thought, "Hey, how can I make this about ME?"
ShockingAlberto
Member
People who say they want objective reviews usually mean "I don't want a game I liked knocked for reasons I do not agree with."
If a game has good graphics, tight gunplay, and a story worthy of television, it should get a 9 or a 10, guaranteed.
If a game has good graphics, tight gunplay, and a story worthy of television, it should get a 9 or a 10, guaranteed.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
I responded with this in another post but will do so to you as well. I think TB is living with the false idea that "gamers" are a persecuted subculture. 'The wolves' would be larger society that oppresses them. Again, it's a silly idea and that of someone with a clear victim complex.
The irony is that by supporting GG he's just bringing back the idea that gamers are asocial outcasts.
Think about how the PC gaming store Gamersgate feels.
plagiarize
Banned
General complaints like this that don't name names are annoying because I don't know if you're talking about someone like me calling him an anti feminist. That isn't name calling. And he is an anti feminist.
Where you talk about both sides is where I roll my eyes at you. Your concern in all this is that people who like TB and Adam Baldwin are being unfairly treated? Doesn't that seem slightly off?
MHWilliams
Member
But this assumes every single site had a "gamer entitlement" article, when even that wasn't as widespread as people make it seem.
I can understand that viewpoint but it's sort of baffling when your username is derived from a game series that has heavily political writing (esp. Mother 3). The games analyzed based on "objective" measures would inevitably sell the game short and miss what they try to achieve in regards to characterization, narrative and player interactivity.
Subjective criticism is good criticism.
charlequin
Banned
We can shortcut it to "there are extremist misogynist sites on the list." We don't need a big tangent of people gawking at the particular flavor of nuttiness on display on that site or a lot of links going out to it.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
Amazing.
NoCryingUntilTheEnd
Banned
You're possibly right. Maybe my memory on the issue is a little fuzzy. I only remember the big sites like IGN, GameSpot, and Kotaku having articles on the issue (all siding against "entitled gamers"). Maybe that was it.
Thanks. Seeing that site makes me literally sick to my stomach.
More_Badass
Member
Seriously, this pisses me off to no end. You don't like a site, fine. Don't fucking read it. But don't stop me from enjoying the sites I like
Watch Da Birdie
I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
One thing I find interesting about this is how the term Social Justice Warrior has totally evolved, and actually has become a legitimate symbol to be worn with pride.
I remember when the term first popped up, it mockingly referred to a very specific group of people---teenagers, usually white and privileged, on the Internet---who practiced a form of social justice that was more or less slacktivism. The "warrior" part was quite tongue-in-cheek.
Even worse, I remember the initial group of people associated with "SJW" were often mocked for doing the exact opposite, and delegitimizing the purpose of social justice by turning it into, as I've seen it called, "an oppression olympics". Particularly, the people who missed the actual point of trigger warning by making trigger warning for literally everything, no matter how benign, the people who basically mocked the idea of being trans by claiming to be "transracial", "transhandicapped", etc. And of course, the fictives, which turned mental illness into a cool lifestyle.
I mean, until this whole GamerGate thing started, I never considered people like Anita, or any gaming journalist, to be a "SJW"...that was a term reserved for people who were legitimately awful and turned the whole idea of "social justice" into a popularity contest and never sought to teach people. Now I see it being used around here, and I'll be honest, it's a bit hard to see that being used and I can never tell if people are using it in a positive sense, or a mocking sense.
I remember when the term first popped up, it mockingly referred to a very specific group of people---teenagers, usually white and privileged, on the Internet---who practiced a form of social justice that was more or less slacktivism. The "warrior" part was quite tongue-in-cheek.
Even worse, I remember the initial group of people associated with "SJW" were often mocked for doing the exact opposite, and delegitimizing the purpose of social justice by turning it into, as I've seen it called, "an oppression olympics". Particularly, the people who missed the actual point of trigger warning by making trigger warning for literally everything, no matter how benign, the people who basically mocked the idea of being trans by claiming to be "transracial", "transhandicapped", etc. And of course, the fictives, which turned mental illness into a cool lifestyle.
I mean, until this whole GamerGate thing started, I never considered people like Anita, or any gaming journalist, to be a "SJW"...that was a term reserved for people who were legitimately awful and turned the whole idea of "social justice" into a popularity contest and never sought to teach people. Now I see it being used around here, and I'll be honest, it's a bit hard to see that being used and I can never tell if people are using it in a positive sense, or a mocking sense.
Dr_LucienSanchez
Banned
Ahh, I totally forgot about those metacritic bonuses. It is definitely a difficult situation then, and without an industry push to get rid of numerical scores, I don't really know what could be done. And as great as that'd be, I doubt it'll ever happen.
Pretty much every subsequent thing I hear from TB is progressively more annoying. Like somebody else said, he never does miss a chance to attempt to elevate himself above a situation.
But, as I generally like to post in regards to him, let's not forget that totalbiscuit is a law graduate with an IQ of 155.
More_Badass
Member
I did a double take earlier this week when I saw a newsletter from Gamersgate in my Inbox.
That was a bilingual joke about preservatives (not the condom kind).
Cosmonaut X
Member
Possibly more accurate...
I don't know if TB, or any of the other supposedly "neutral" youtubers have avoided politics. They will openly discuss rumors of the evil Zoe Quinn, they'll clearly misread the Gamers articles. But they won't really talk about, for instance, the shitty practices of Milo or InternetAristocrat. At most you'll see them say some generic "be nice" platitudes but they quite deliberately won't actually speak about any of the prominent GGers. At least as far as I've seen.
Watch Da Birdie
I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
I bet you a million bucks the average GameGater agrees with that Persona 4 character.
What I am saying is that character assassinations are allowed if the target is seen as fair game ideologically speaking. Baldwin has been called <insertcurseword> but if you do the same for someone like Sarkeesian, then words have consequences. The same dynamic exists elsewhere but is not enforced via moderators but a mob of sorts who will attack you if you are on the wrong side of the culture war.
And TB has received a lot of criticism even though he has tried to avoid political discussions in his videos.
I'm using it in a positive sense. I'm no longer a warrior, I'm a paladin.
NoCryingUntilTheEnd
Banned
The political writing in games have yet to have an affect on me, negative or positive. It doesn't affect me so I don't care about reviews where the writer are affected by it.
That being said, I don't have a problem with those reviews and I am for subjective criticism. Hell, GG is for subjective criticism and they don't even know it because they don't actually know what "objective" means. They think it means "judge the game by its gameplay", but isn't that in itself subjective? There have been plenty of games where some loved the gameplay and others hated it. Or there are some games where the gameplay isn't too great, but the game excels in other areas, so some reviewers might consider the game average due to its average gameplay, while others will look past the gameplay to see the other aspects the game excels in (writing, graphics, music...).
Hemi-PoweredDrone
Member
Yeah, I feel like the gaming press' desire to get things out as fast as possible before anyone else has reduced the amount of tact in their writing, making a lot of things sound a lot worse than they're intended to because they don't seem actually read it after finishing it. They may not mean to attack gamers, they probably don't, but people write in ways that make it easy for people to misinterpret it, and they may as well be attacking them.
He has condemned the harassment and such as far back as August, I think, on the Co-Optional Podcast, but he thinks that he shouldn't have to, and honestly he's kind of right. We shouldn't have to condemn people for making death threats and harrassing people because that kind of behavior shouldn't have been allowed to flourish in the first place, and it should be assumed that any sensible person would be against it. The fact that people are accusing people that don't condemn it of supporting it is indicitive that, while gaming may not be being attacked by outside forces, it's being attacked and smeared by itself, we let the bigots get too loud and people have begun to think that's the mouthpiece for the whole damn community. He has, though, said he supports what is supposed to be the core ideology of Gamergate, having proper ethics in game journalism, which really isn't a surprise considering what he's said in the past. He does seem to be ignoring a lot of the harassment inherent in the movement, though, which is kind of unfortunate. I'm kind of surprised he hasn't followed his friend Jim Sterling and said that he doesn't need Gamergate to support ethics, especially since he's been talking about journalistic ethics for a long time. I will say too that he seems to be caught up in the write as fast as possible crowd with the things he puts on Twitter, but that's why he puts them on twitter and not on a website that would claim to be journalism of any sort.
Maybe I'm caught up in fanboyism, having been following him for a very long while, but it seems that people that only read his twitter have been misinterpreting him a bit, but he also seems blinded by a few things himself, combined with him wanting to avoid a lot of this because the shitstorm is so large and he wants to avoid feeding the trolls. I don't blame him for trying not to get intimately involved in the shittier side, especially considering everything that has been going on in his life with the cancer and all, but he does seem to be ignoring it too much sometimes. I do want to agree with him that there is still, somewhere in Gamergate, a desire to actually promote journalistic ethics, but I just can't see it and can only see Gamergate as something made from pure hatred and bigotry, which is weird because I'm not the one calling myself cynical.
Cosmonaut X
Member
Rab can be a bit of a nob on Twitter at times - the pouty selfies tread a fairly thin line between mocking himself and being irritatingly narcissistic - but he is on fire when it comes to stuff like the GMAs, and he's been saying it for *ages*. He - and guys like John Walker - is the kind of person who any decent movement for ethics in games journalism should be fucking championing, but...
Sorry, but I *really* disagree with this. While initially it may have been a fair position, at some point the community as a whole has to actually start being more vocal about this and making it clear that it's unacceptable. Perhaps it's unfair that it has got to this point, and people like him feel it's ridiculous that they should have to make clear something that should be self-evident, but this kind of nasty shit has taken root and flourised *because* the silent, sensible majority stayed silent.
The football hooligan/racism comparison is actually very appropriate. I remember the complaints from sensible football fans in the UK initially, and the dismay at being tarred with the same brush as the scum who turned up for a fight, or to throw sectarian and racist abuse, and the reluctance of clubs to do anything about it, but at some point everyone involved realised there was no option but to actually become active in policing their own communities and making it clear that this kind of shit wasn't acceptable, or see their sport and passion damned by it.
Yeah, their shtick seems to be "don't judge the game by anything I don't want you to judge it by." That doesn't necessarily mean not to judge the game by story, since I'm sure GG would be all over a new story-driven game with an anti-feminist message.
MHWilliams
Member
That wasn't rushed, it just seems like Alexander's style. On the rest, I had a post outlining the articles. Of those, Alexander and non-gaming outlets were the most "mean".
So once again... why is this attributed to the gaming press?
Frank does seem to be heavy on that warpath...
Watch Da Birdie
I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
Yeah, it's just an odd change. I'm not trying to say you're a slacktivist---quite the opposite, I think in this case there really IS a social justice issue that needs to be addressed.
I mean, I remember the threads on SomethingAwful about the SJW---and mind you, SomethingAwful despite its reputation is quite progressive, even more than NeoGAF I'd say in some aspects---used the term all the time, and it was never in reference to a legitimate feminist like Anita, it was always referencing people like the person who created the "Ark Project", and others who just screamed about change but never did anything and just attacked others. In a way, the members of GamerGate ARE basically the same type of Social Justice Warriors, they don't care about justice, they just like fighting.
I remember they brought up some story about one of their targets insulting a transperson---as a way to condemn them. But the ridiculous part was, I KNOW that none of them actually cared about the person who was insulted, they just wanted some dirt on their enemy. And I've never seen a positive comment about a transperson on 4chan, so I know the large majority of them probably even agreed with the insult. That was the moment that I knew they didn't care
Hemi-PoweredDrone
Member
Am I alone in saying that before this blew up I had never even heard of these guys? Is it just ignorance on my part, or is it impossible to believe that TB and others just as easily could have not heard of them either before, and thus think they aren't important? I still barely know who they are and why everyone is fucking yelling their head off about them, I guess I can understand Milo since he's a writer on Breitbart, but I still don't even know who InternetAristocrat or what makes him special, besides that he looks like a smug asshole in his pictures.
Liu Kang Baking A Pie
Member
That was a petty way to go about it, but holding people accountable for their waffling, carefully inoffensive statements is good.
Insisting that people must comment on something, then mocking someone for commenting (not even the substance of it, just that they would decry threats of murder) is unreasonable.
Insisting that people must comment on something, then mocking someone for commenting (not even the substance of it, just that they would decry threats of murder) is unreasonable.
It's pretty much a non-comment, decrying the "worst of both sides" -- stuff that almost nobody actually defends - while still endorsing some of GG's arguments ("when your media doesnt represent you, or actively attacks you as it has here, its not your media").
Insisting that people must comment on something, then mocking someone for commenting (not even the substance of it, just that they would decry threats of murder) is unreasonable.
Cifaldi is criticing that PA's statement wasn't particularly worthwhile and didn't send a strong enough message that GG is a hate campaign and everyone should back away from it - instead, it was stating something obvious to the point of a platitude that everyone agrees on: "threats/murder are wrong".
It's especially troubling when these guys are the ones benefitting from the status quo and can easily just sit back and enjoy their money, power, and attention, while others fear for their safety and can't even exist in video games because of their identity.
HolyBradBatman
Neo Member
I think its less of them wanting subjective reviews and more of wanting articles free from outside social pressure.
Either way, I think it's great having an open dialogue on subjectivity and equality in the industry. It's sad that what could have been a mature analysis and discussion on these subjects had to devolve into threats of violence.
Watch Da Birdie
I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
"Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for killing. Like badwrong, or badong. Yes, killing is badong. From this moment, I will stand for the opposite of killing: gnodab." - Penny Arcade, 2014
Captainbojanglesiii
Banned
I don't mean to come off as rude and I am certainly not saying that I believe in the other side of this argument, but I know there are people who do believe the opposite and are for GamerGate, or rather do not agree with the majority of opinions. I don't think that putting the #StopGamerGate2014 in the thread title will lead to a balanced discussion should someone wish to propose their other beliefs and may actually lead to some posters in fear of this thread.
I see this as correct in mostly all regards. The quality of a story is still subjective and digging futher in, what constitutes good graphics? Good graphical design, image quality? I think the only way to make objective game reviews is to compare to other games on the same console in all aspects.
Oh man, I can see how that would be confusing. Stop Guilty Gear 2014 XD
I see this as correct in mostly all regards. The quality of a story is still subjective and digging futher in, what constitutes good graphics? Good graphical design, image quality? I think the only way to make objective game reviews is to compare to other games on the same console in all aspects.
Like I said, unreasonable in the sense that people outside of an issue are being painted with the most extreme actions (not even ideas) of that movement, and being told they must react, and when they react by decrying the extremism, they're mocked for not agreeing with a forgone conclusion.
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