It turns out everyone is horrible (tw: possible GamerGate thread)

[Barry Admin]

One was all you asked for. No idea about the hounding, never heard about that before.

[j_u_d_a_s]

One was all you asked for. No idea about the hounding, never heard about that before.

Well at least you didn't say Vivian James. CHS, never having actually played a game before gamergate, was an early bandwagon jumper who used it as yet another chance to attack modern feminism by pandering to gamers as an identity. https://twitter.com/CHSommers/status/506155641019564032

The weirdest thing is that at no point did anyone say that games make gamers sexist. All of GG was an emotional response to a form of critique that they didn't approve of. The issue of The One True Way to Review Video Games has been going around since the dawn of time with many calling for subjective opinion free reviews, boiling a game down to base mechanics which if you ask me is a sad simplistic way to critique any form of media (incidentally, amateur film critics are just as guilty of this by discussing each aspect of the film as if it's entirely separate from the other, acting, pacing etc). My fave game of all time, Silent Hill 2, is objectively a dog to play but the themes, presentation, atmosphere, soundtrack, sound design and most importantly execution of its themes and the way it unfolds its simple plot is an absolute masterpiece. To reduce it to its core mechanics is to ignore what's great about it.
The response to Sarkeesian daring to view games through a feminist perspective by showing very real misogyny and gamergate supporters bleating on about SJWs speak volumes about the lack of self awareness over a perceived slight.

[Huxleys Babkins]

I'd be really interested to see some examples of Gamergate being used positively for it's core argument of "it's about ethics in games journalism" rather than the targeted, sustained campaigns of abuse against certain fringe women who work in the games industry.

Cos I didn't see any when it was at its peak and I certainly can't see any now.

[biggytitbo]

I cannot understand how anyone can spend any substantial length of time on a gaming forum and not come away reeling from the juvenile spite and cruelty.

Is this because there are a tremendous amount of actual juveniles on those forums?

[The Boston Crab]

Sonicfox just won DBFZ at EVO 2018. He's a gay, black furry. Massively popular.

ProblemX, a black British man, just won SFV at EVO 2018. Massively popular.

The Fighting Game Community is full of ethnic minority players, black, Hispanic, Oriental, subcontinental, even a few women in there. Pretty damn good scene, and probably one of the oldest gaming communities out there, as well as the most welcoming.

FWIW, the Souls community is also absolutely brilliant, very welcoming and positive and collaborative, so I was pretty disappointed to see Mister Six cite Bloodborne as a GG kind of game. My experience of that community, which is to say that I have been in that subreddit since the first week of its existence, is nothing but welcoming and passionate and patient towards new players and fans, even now. So I'd just like to say fuck off and pick a better example rather than slurring a brilliant, open community.

I'd also say that I semi regularly go on a couple of gaming forums, both UK based, and I've had nothing but a warm response. Again, an older crowd than much of the Internet and very few non-British people but again, a range of ethnic backgrounds and a few openly gay members, both forums overwhelmingly left wing and aware of the worst aspects of the gaming community, or rather, of people in society. There are very few women, only a handful, but I genuinely believe that women aren't generally as interested in using forums as men, and it's no statement on the failings of either community, as much as we like to self-flaggelate here.

I've seen perhaps one or two people among the hundreds of regular names who have argued for GG, and a small handful who have simply questioned the received opinions around GG. Pretty healthy stuff, as it is here, albeit with fewer people who don't actually play games throwing themselves at the subject - but that's reflective of this community of loveable know-it-alls. In short, my own experience does not tally with the idea that gaming forums are anything but welcoming and well-informed, on the whole. As an aside, it seems that there are a lot of young women into gaming on Twitter, so I guess that's where they feel more comfortable, perhaps because it's easier to get attention there and complain, which are the favourite things for women.

[biggytitbo]

I've read through this thread and It's very interesting, am certainly glad I completely missed this at the time though. I do play a lot of games now, watch a lot of gaming content on YouTube and read various websites about games and I don't see any of this toxic stuff. Maybe it's because I don't play games online? Or has everyone grown up now?

[madhair60]

I love how "furry" is being thrown around with "gay" and "black" as if they're equivalent

[Urinal Cake]

As I'm playing Mass Effect Andromeda at the minute, it spurred memories of "FemShep" - wasn't the female Shepard widely celebrated by gamers at the time? And didn't they actively lobby for more inclusive sexual orientations to be catered for in other Bioware games like Dragon Age?

I'm not sure how we moved from that, to the idea that gamers all hate women. Although I do realise that it's become increasingly fashionable in recent years to sneer at "straight white males", and that seems wrapped up in all this.

Well there was a whole thing where a lot of 'straight white males' accused Mass Effect of 'uglifying' the female character model compared to her real life counterpart to be more PC.

[Zetetic]

Or has everyone grown up now?

A bit, perhaps - and perhaps the more unpleasant aspects of Gamergate were growing pains.

There certainly are plenty of gaming 'spaces' where people aren't dicks.

Are the eSports communities, the people playing Dark Souls, the people playing Mass Effect and Dragon Age, the people playing Minecraft, the people playing MW and Battlefield, playing Red Orchestra, playing Star Citizen  .... the same people? Obviously there's some crossover - not least because of the narrowness of the market in some genres (want a high-budget scifi RPG? Deal with BioWare and their spurious plotting and weird conflicting approaches to gender and sexuality.) - but the stereotype of a 'gamer' is about some places more than others (and never claimed as universal, surely?).

[Zetetic]

A tangent - gaming hardware and gaming hardware journalism. What a grotesque waste of resources. (I suppose this is true of all electronics, but gaming hardware seems to elevate to awfulness in its own fashion.)

[The Boston Crab]

I love how "furry" is being thrown around with "gay" and "black" as if they're equivalent

No, just the third in a list of descriptors in contrast to the assumed 'straight white guy' to show how accepting and diverse the FGC is. If a woman had won it, I think that particular community would have been delighted en masse.

[Funcrusher]

So that's one (1). She was quickly hounded out of it too.

When did this happen?

[madhair60]

No, just the third in a list of descriptors in contrast to the assumed 'straight white guy' to show how accepting and diverse the FGC is. If a woman had won it, I think that particular community would have been delighted en masse.

Wasn't really aiming that at you as much as the tweets I've seen about it, gay black furry, two out of three ain't bad I guess.

FGC has had big problems with sexual harassment in the past but I'm glad to hear it's better now

In other news whoops! Sexism

https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483

[The Boston Crab]

If I were to guess which fighting game communities are best to worst in terms of diversity and basically everything about them, it'd probably be:

Street Fighter
Tekken
Neo Geo everything



All the anime shit ones






Smash

[Funcrusher]

Video from 2015 in which 5 women discuss Gamergate. I'm sure they were 'quickly hounded out'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpX9u92vtvk&t=78s

[Barry Admin]

I'd be really interested to see some examples of Gamergate being used positively for it's core argument of "it's about ethics in games journalism" rather than the targeted, sustained campaigns of abuse against certain fringe women who work in the games industry.

Cos I didn't see any when it was at its peak and I certainly can't see any now.

Again, it's a biased source, but you may be able to find some in here: http://thisisvideogames.com/gamergatewiki/index.php/GamerGate_Achievements

As an aside, it doesn't seem to be on there, but I always enjoyed 4chan sponsoring a colon cancer charity to mock anti-Gamergaters who were suffering from "butthurt."

[Funcrusher]

There appear to be some women at this Gamergate meetup, but I'm sure they were quickly hounded out.

https://supernerdland.com/gamergate-goes-to-birmingham-gginbrum-from-the-inside/

[popcorn]

At this point Gamergate is just a mess of claims and counterclaims.

But you can reduce any conflict to this. Of course it is. It doesn't mean there's no right answer. It doesn't mean there's no path through the woods. I don't know how you can possibly look at Gamergate and come away thinking "they're all as bad as each other".

[Barry Admin]

But you can reduce any conflict to this. Of course it is. It doesn't mean there's no right answer. It doesn't mean there's no path through the woods. I don't know how you can possibly look at Gamergate and come away thinking "they're all as bad as each other".

What's been interesting to me, looking back, is how many outlets ran those "Gamers are Dead" articles on the same day. I'd always felt that the grass roots consumer movement aspect of it was quickly overshadowed by the games press deliberately and  successfully switching the focus, and instead parading it as being "just about hating women." I feel rather more certain about that now.

[Barry Admin]

Actually, another thing I'd like to point out is that a lot of people weren't necessarily sick of progressive values in gaming or gaming journalism, rather a lot of them were just sick of being preached to about that stuff, if that makes sense as a distinction.

[popcorn]

What's been interesting to me, looking back, is how many outlets ran those "Gamers are Dead" articles on the same day. I'd always felt that the grass roots consumer movement aspect of it was quickly overshadowed by the games press successfully switching the focus, and instead parading it as being "just about hating women." I feel rather more certain about that now.

Certain about what? Do you think the "switch in focus" was deceptive?

[Barry Admin]

Certain about what? Do you think the "switch in focus" was deceptive?

Yes. I feel more certain that the games press helped push the line that gamergaters didn't care at all about ethical journalism and conflicts of interest etc. Nailing your colours to the pro-Gamergate side quickly meant that you were seen as someone who hated women, and that this was your primary concern and motivation.

[Funcrusher]

What's been interesting to me, looking back, is how many outlets ran those "Gamers are Dead" articles on the same day. I'd always felt that the grass roots consumer movement aspect of it was quickly overshadowed by the games press deliberately and  successfully switching the focus, and instead parading it as being "just about hating women." I feel rather more certain about that now.

That was the point at which the whole thing became really combative. As throughout, the 'right side of history' crowd just doubled down, and their pals in the mainstream press regurgitated the 'angry misogynerd virgins are afraid of women', as they continue to do to this day.

I can thus far find absolutely no evidence that Christina Hoff Sommers was hounded out of Gamergate and as far as I can tell she remains a supporter.

[Cloud]

Obviously several posters have pushed back against the idea that "SJWs" would make people more right wing, but I do think there's some truth in it. Clearly a left wing person will not become right wing because of a push for equality, or because they were called out over something, but I don't thinks its a stretch to say that people who aren't politically engaged, or who maybe lean slightly right in certain areas, but aren't ideologically set in their opinions, could be pushed into the arms of the right if they feel attacked unfairly, or feel alienated by the judgemental and uncompromising tone of some on the left.

I do get it that as a straight white man meself, a lot of what you'd call identity politics can feel like an attack. Especially privilege theory. But ironically it's because of that kind of privilege I could choose not to be actively involved. It does take actual effort on my part to learn how racism is more invisible and insidious than burning crosses. Same with ideas about consent, rape culture/enabling/apologism and sexism in culture. My initial response was "but I don't daub racist graffiti on people's windows" and "I've never grabbed a woman into an alley." It was years of listening to people's experiences of daily life and how they have to manage their every move in case of being judged upon it and becoming aware of my own unconscious biases. I didn't know how my ignorance was contributing to the problem.

I think you both touch on some interesting points here.  People do need to be aware of privilege and the way in which we can end up feeding into the problems without intending to, just because we don't realise.

But also the left/sjw/whatever could do with more diplomatic ways of putting it, so that people don't feel attacked in the way Kelvin decribes.  It used to be that progressives were really good at this kind of thing (though it wound the right up in a different way as "PC" would keep changing their terminology to use different euphemisms) and somehow for some reason they stopped with this and started using direct language.  Things went from "we need to avoid offending people" to "fuck that, I'm ANGRY, I have the RIGHT to be ANGRY and I have the RIGHT to fully express that ANGER and if that offends the person who's wronged me then GOOD".  Well, yeah you do have the right, but is it constructive?

For example, I said just now "we don't realise" when I could have said "we're ignorant".  The problem with the word "ignorant" is that colloquially (at least in the UK) it's often spat at people just after "fucking" and often before a pejorative like "twat" to mean the informal definition of rude or discourteous.  It's associated with winding your window down and yelling after someone barged through on your side of the road or whatever, and I think that's what people hear if someone says "you're ignorant of the issues here...", rather than a polite "I think you may be unaware" (note I also adjusted it to "I think you may be" to add some humility)

This applies especially to the word "racist".  It's thrown about willy nilly as technically speaking it can be absolutely correct, someone has an subconscious racial bias or takes advantage perhaps unknowingly of in institutionally racist system or votes for a political candidate who happens to have racist policies or whatever.  But people don't hear that, they hear "you're a scumbag who hates black people and daubs racist graffiti on things", which was the more common use of the word not so long ago.  So maybe it more frequently needs to be put in ways like "possibly having a bit of subconscious racial bias" or "benefit from a racially biased system and just need to be aware of this in some way" or "I get that it's about sovereignty for you, it's just a shame that it enables racist policies and inflames hate crimes" rather than "you're a racist".

You can see this play out quite nicely in this video by Milo Stewart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Brqo0vSNE
What she meant: subconscious and societal biases and how people need to be aware of them
How she put it: "ALL WHITE PEOPLE ARE RACIST"
How people reacted: Well, take a look at the like/dislike ratio.
Does this excuse how people treated her with all the bullying and harassment afterwards?  Absolutely not.  It's disgusting. 
But I also question whether the reaction would've been quite so severe without such loaded, provocative language.  I think people can probably deal with learning that they may have some subconscious racial biases that are not really their fault and that they can adjust for with awareness; but people hate being slapped with the term "racist" (or sexist or whatever else).  They hear "scumbag" and get defensive and fight back etc.
Obviously saying things like "maybe she shouldn't use language like that and should be more diplomatic" tends to be seen as Victim Blaming but that's not really the intention here, I just question whether kinder, more diplomatic language would have a better chance of swaying people and less chance of nasty responses and pushing politically unengaged people to the right etc.

[Funcrusher]

I think you both touch on some interesting points here.  People do need to be aware of privilege and the way in which we can end up feeding into the problems without intending to, just because we don't realise.

But also the left/sjw/whatever could do with more diplomatic ways of putting it, so that people don't feel attacked in the way Kelvin decribes.  It used to be that progressives were really good at this kind of thing (though it wound the right up in a different way as "PC" would keep changing their terminology to use different euphemisms) and somehow for some reason they stopped with this and started using direct language.  Things went from "we need to avoid offending people" to "fuck that, I'm ANGRY, I have the RIGHT to be ANGRY and I have the RIGHT to fully express that ANGER and if that offends the person who's wronged me then GOOD".  Well, yeah you do have the right, but is it constructive?

For example, I said just now "we don't realise" when I could have said "we're ignorant".  The problem with the word "ignorant" is that colloquially (at least in the UK) it's often spat at people just after "fucking" and often before a pejorative like "twat" to mean the informal definition of rude or discourteous.  It's associated with winding your window down and yelling after someone barged through on your side of the road or whatever, and I think that's what people hear if someone says "you're ignorant of the issues here...", rather than a polite "I think you may be unaware" (note I also adjusted it to "I think you may be" to add some humility)

This applies especially to the word "racist".  It's thrown about willy nilly as technically speaking it can be absolutely correct, someone has an subconscious racial bias or takes advantage perhaps unknowingly of in institutionally racist system or votes for a political candidate who happens to have racist policies or whatever.  But people don't hear that, they hear "you're a scumbag who hates black people and daubs racist graffiti on things", which was the more common use of the word not so long ago.  So maybe it more frequently needs to be put in ways like "possibly having a bit of subconscious racial bias" or "benefit from a racially biased system and just need to be aware of this in some way" or "I get that it's about sovereignty for you, it's just a shame that it enables racist policies and inflames hate crimes" rather than "you're a racist".

You can see this play out quite nicely in this video by Milo Stewart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5Brqo0vSNE
What she meant: subconscious and societal biases and how people need to be aware of them
How she put it: "ALL WHITE PEOPLE ARE RACIST"
How people reacted: Well, take a look at the like/dislike ratio.
Does this excuse how people treated her with all the bullying and harassment afterwards?  Absolutely not.  It's disgusting. 
But I also question whether the reaction would've been quite so severe without such loaded, provocative language.  I think people can probably deal with learning that they may have some subconscious racial biases that are not really their fault and that they can adjust for with awareness; but people hate being slapped with the term "racist" (or sexist or whatever else).  They hear "scumbag" and get defensive and fight back etc.
Obviously saying things like "maybe she shouldn't use language like that and should be more diplomatic" tends to be seen as Victim Blaming but that's not really the intention here, I just question whether kinder, more diplomatic language would have a better chance of swaying people and less chance of nasty responses and pushing politically unengaged people to the right etc.

I think the problem stems not just from how things are said but also why they are said. SJWs always want to do the 'call out', which involves someone being a terrible person, not just having mis-spoken or whatever, and they being the righteous one, thus getting their fix of sanctimony. This involves a death of affect amping up so what was once sexism is now misogyny, racial predjudice is now white supremacy etc. It's no wonder this ends up pissing people off.

And a critique of identity politics from the left was always there to be made an is definitely on the rise. Chris Hedges gets it:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/bankruptcy-american-left/

This video is also good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RmO9GUh8pM&t=67s

[dr beat]

I just think people don't like it when they go on social media, perhaps just to check what time Gary's barbecue starts next week, only to be bombarded by content that says that they are a bad person.

[Kelvin]

I can't find the post where we mentioned it earlier in the thread, but IGN have sacked their Nintendo editor over that Dead Cells review plagerism, and similarities have been found between his older reviewers and other outlets, as well.

[Kelvin]

Meanwhile:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/08/06/dead-cells-review-removed

Here's the original reference.

[Funcrusher]

I guess you could say that this story demonstrates ethics in gaming journalism as this person was fired for plagiarism.

[Zetetic]

False flag I reckon to distract from the real issues.

(Arthur Geis still walks free despite his infamous Bayonetta 2 review. He gave it a 7.5 for God's sake.)