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GamerGate Explained!!! [locked]
 
It's this thing on the Internet.

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09/13/14, 05:42    Locked 01/04/16, 01:39
 
   
 
@Zero
Isn't tricking people into buying crap basically, like, the entire mainstream gaming industry? Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed, Halo 4, CoD: Dead Horse edition, Gran Turismo, every RPG that uses action-packed cutscenes in the commercials, etc., etc.

And almost every big publisher is shifty, because they can't afford to have a billion-dollar AAA bomb. Ubisoft is just one example that I remembered. Warerare gave us Konami. I'm pretty sure that EA and Activision have done it, as well, although I can't remember the exact context.

I mean, I feel like I'm pushing a pro-evil stance here, but I think it's just realism. Even assuming that being a good person makes you happy, or whatever, you CAN'T assign individual ethics to a corporation, unless it's led by some kind of powerful tyrant who owns a majority of shares. In your case, a benevolent powerful tyrant who owns a majority of shares. Who could that be? Hell, even Notch sold out to Microsoft.

And if you want to bring up ethics, then morality is a sliding scale. Everyone can probably agree that game cases shouldn't be made out of baby seals, but you can't just copy and paste your ethics as a consumer of games over those of someone who has to run a business. Reality is compromise, and everyone has different responsibilities.

The three involved parties here are: 1) Publisher, 2) Gaming Media, and 3) Consumer. They each have different constraints and goals. Here's a perspective from the oft-maligned gaming media (Youtube branch):



Seems like a heartfelt message. I can empathise with him. Will I trust his opinion? Maybe, maybe not. That's my responsibility as a consumer.

@kriswright
Jump on board! There's room for all on the cynicism express!
10/27/14, 02:42   
Anand said:
I mean, I feel like I'm pushing a pro-evil stance here, but I think it's just realism.

"Gentlemen, to evil."

10/27/14, 03:10   
Yes, tricking people into buying crap is basically the entire mainstream industry. When have you ever known me to be a fan of the mainstream industry?!

I'm sure it is a large part of the indie industry too, for that matter.

As for the shares thing, I think that you make some good points... ABOUT WHY CAPITALISM IS EVIL, BWA HA HA HA HA. No wait, I mean about why it is so darn hard for a company working within the current capitalist structure to act ethically. But it's probably also no coincidence that one of the most ethical large gaming companies, Valve, refuses to turn into a publicly traded company. I don't know if that decision was related to ethics, but no one said companies have to turn public and start letting shareholders dictate their ethics. That is a decision people make.

And you may be beholden to share owners to a large degree, but at the end of the day they can't force it. Don't Nintendo's shareholders constantly beg them to make cell phone games? And Iwata is like ha ha screw you no because WE DO WHAT WE WANT. I wonder how many people actually have any real say in how Nintendo operates. Like... 3 maybe? 5? Probably not very many.
10/27/14, 03:11   
Edited: 10/27/14, 03:11
Zero said:
Well, it is directed "exclusively" towards men because men are the ones who control the industry, for the most part, and men are the ones who have created a heavily imbalanced situation. The rare sexist game that caters to women is... well, I can't even think of any, but if they exist, they're such a minimal issue because they aren't really the mainstream. Although I guarantee you that if the reverse were true... a primarily female-controlled industry with a fanbase of men that is rising every day and has met or exceeded the female fanbase in many ways... a LOT of people would be directing this towards women.

Just when I thought I was out . . .

Despite saying my last post in the Bayonetta demo thread was my final post, here I am. Opted to move my response over here, since people were actually trying to talk about the Bayonetta demo in the other thread again and this seemed a more natural place with no actual gaming discussion being had.

I felt I should respond because I think you misread the article I (tried to) link, [/url], (I don’t know why my links never seem to work. I hit the link button and inserted it into the box that popped up), the point was that the moral criticism and claims of sexism are directed exclusively toward men and majority male entertainment fields, while no one levels similar criticism at female dominated fandoms/entertainment industries. I think you are just mistaken that “a LOT of people would be directing this towards women,” if the situation were reversed because we can see that doesn’t happen. The author of the article (which is definitely worth reading in full) gave the example of female-dominated fandoms in television. This is getting a little far afield, but I think a better example is fiction books and publishing. It is an industry dominated by women and women are 4 times as likely to read fiction as men. That seems like it should be a far bigger issue than women being less likely to play video games and the issue more likely to have a greater societal impact. Among other things, it may be one factor at play in why girls perform so much better than boys in education (another field heavily dominated by women). But in the case of publishing, the common reaction is “Men Don’t Read.” Imagine if the sexes were reversed: the publishing industry was dominated by men, men were far more likely to read, and their answer was “Women Don’t Read.” Or you can just look at what is happening in videogames.

One good article on the publishing industry/men not reading is this one. [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-pinter/why-men-dont-read-how-pub_b_549491.html]
I want to highlight this quote: “I was hesitant to write this article, mainly because in no way do I want to be perceived as diminishing the talents of many, many brilliant women in publishing, nor do I believe that there is a true 'gender bias'. A bias insinuates some sort of malice, a purposeful exclusion of a segment of society for selfish or ignorant reasons. Those kind of insinuations are not the aim of this piece, nor are they my opinions in any way. This is a critique of the system, not those who work within it.” Yet, when it’s men or the gaming industry, few “activists” have shown similar caution or a hesitation to claim gender bias or sexism.

On the subject of #gamergate, I've notice a lot of talk about death threats and harassment directed at people that are anti #gamergate, but was surprised no one acknowledged that a lot of pro #gamergate people, including women and minorities have also been the victims of doxxing, death threats, etc. Including people having knives and syringes sent to their houses and one girl having a tweet sent with her address and commenting on the security of her windows. Some was mentioned in the prior article I linked. Another was in a recent Washington Post article, which I would link if I could find. Seems like a small number of sociopaths associating with both sides or at least using the controversy as an excuse to cause trouble.
10/27/14, 06:04   
Edited: 10/27/14, 06:05
@EagleC83

What are your examples of sexist literary fiction? The thing about Sarkeesian and other people who are looking at these issues is that they are actually analyzing them and identifying problems. You and the guy in this article (who appears to be comparing online fanfiction to the multi billion dollar video game industry) just want to wave your hands in a direction without actually putting in the effort. Hey, maybe there are problems with literary fiction, I'm not an expert.

Of course, even if you are right, the existence of problems in literary fiction does not diminish the problems of video games in any way. The response should be "we should talk about this too", not "stop talking about that." But of course, that would require that you actually care about those supposed issues instead of using them to try to score points and deflect criticism from video games.
10/27/14, 06:25   
Edited: 10/27/14, 06:25
@EagleC83 I was talking about if this were reversed in the video game industry.

But I'll address the rest. If "fiction" is dominated by women holy F they are doing a 1,000 times better job of not making it into a girl's only club than we are with video games. For one, just look at all of the prominent works out there either written by women or written by men who take care with portrayals of women. I wouldn't have even guessed the field was "dominated" by women. Fantasy and science fiction certainly are not. Crime dramas? Political thrillers? Horror?

And I'm with Jargon here. Where are the examples of sexist literary fiction? I'm sure they exist, but do they in any way compare to the proportions that we see it in video games? And even if they somehow did, why would that mean we shouldn't take on sexism in video games?

People acknowledge the threats against gamergate all the time. But again, it's really not even comparable. Pretty much everyone who publicly speaks out against gamergate, including actual friends of mine, get mobbed. And my basic position is "gamergate is horrible and does way more harm than good", a position which I can certainly back up. People responding to that with "but people do bad things to us too!" are just refusing to address the issue.

I read an article today written by a guy who was defending the NSA / etc. intrusions into our privacy. His basic position seemed to be... "we're not that bad... look at China!" Yeah, that totally convinced me that I should stop criticizing the US policies. Except in this case a more accurate comparison would be something like "We're not that bad... Canada has some problems too!" I'm not going to stop criticizing serious problems just because Canada has some too.
10/27/14, 08:02   
Edited: 10/27/14, 08:03
I think people need to stop talking about gamer gate, Zero you are my only link to the entire thing, talk about the issues fine but stop referencing the movement and it will probably die. I keep forgetting about it, then you mention it on facebook and this depressing nonsense is alive in my consciousness again. It seems the only people keeping gamergate alive for me are the people supposedly against it.
10/27/14, 10:20   
I do think probably the best thing that can happen now is that gamergate fades away. But as many, many people have pointed out, gamergate isn't just a random reaction to a specific incident, it is the joining together of a lot of energy that has been around for a long time (and became furious energy the second Anita announced her first video.) If that doesn't get addressed in some way this stuff is just going to keep on happening moving forward.
10/27/14, 14:46   
Yeah, no, the media tried that whole "don't talk about GG and it will go away" thing, and it didn't work. Been going on for over 2 months now.

The only thing not talking about it would accomplish would be that the abuse would go on, only the victims would suffer in silence.

GG news ruin my day, too. And I try not to talk about it in a way that promotes it. But the voices of reason need to be amplified, not shut down.
10/27/14, 16:39   
I guess the problem I have is that this seems to be the only publicity that gaming is getting these days to the point where I don't even bother checking news sites or forums like these anymore, I can't even tell you what's releasing on 3DS this year. The whole thing has been a massive turn off for me, it feels toxic.
10/27/14, 20:23   
@warerare

That's because nothing is releasing on 3DS this year.
10/27/14, 21:38   
@Secret_Tunnel

This is unfortunately true.

I bought Phoenix vs Layton a while back, and Smash a couple of weeks ago. That's it for the year. Depressing.
10/27/14, 21:42   
@Shadowlink

A lot of people are liking Fantasy Life... but I'm not sure what's coming out next year.

I suppose we still have Ultimate NES Remix and Pokemon this year. Hopefully there's some good eShop stuff on the way!
10/27/14, 21:54   
Shantae literally just released. GET ON IT PEOPLE.
10/27/14, 22:18   
Theatrhythm: Curtain Call!! It's great...!

I agree that this whole thing is toxic and unpleasant all-around though.
10/28/14, 03:29   
I'm going to side with Anand in that the publishers should be allowed to deliver their message whatever way they want within the boundaries of law, but it's the media's job to report on how they go about doing it so that there's transparency for the audience. Even involving Nintendo they are doing the Nintendo Directs so they control the message; that ultimately also delivers a biased message since it's only coming from them. In some way they are pretty much glorified infomercials. Meanwhile it's the game media's responsibility to parse and interpret the message that Nintendo delivered.

One issue I have with this Gamergate thing is that publishers are ALWAYS trying to get into good graces with the media regardless of medium. Tell me... how many people who support Gamergate would agree with abolishing E3? E3 is after all a huge event so that publishers can spend a bunch of dollars attempting to court the media to write good things about them, meanwhile having their representatives pitch the games. It's essentially another sort of marketing campaign to get positive press. I mean certainly you don't think they spend a bunch of money so that gamers can have a jolly good time.

@Anand
Not directly but he did write this article about an event Quinn was involved in.

I believe I read somewhere that he wrote another article about her game as well.
10/28/14, 03:29   

I actually think this image says a lot. They have created this narrative where they are basically heroes now.
10/28/14, 06:34   
Edited: 10/28/14, 06:36
10/28/14, 06:49   
It's sort of hilarious to me how gamergate tries to claim they are a coalition of both liberals and conservatives and yet every single thread of theirs has tons of liberal bashing. You can't spend 2 minutes in any GG forum without seeing attacks on feminists, "cultural Marxists", and SJWs.

But yeah, I'd be interested to know a week or two from now what kind of attention your brother got. He seemed to give them enough bones to not make them angry, but he also infers gamergate is part of a sexist culture, which is sure to rile some of them up.

I can't even read the comments from GGers seriously though. For instance, in what world is this even remotely accurate?

Basically, GamerGate said to the people in #NotYourShield that they were welcome here and that they had a choice. That's important - giving people a choice as to who and what they want to believe in.

Gamergate has constantly turned on their own over small disagreements, and they have a very, very "you're either with us or against us" approach. The weird thing though is that I think a lot of them really believe what they are saying. It's like they are living in a whole different reality.

In fact, my very point just a few posts down:

The guy is brainwashed already, unless he comes out and defends us, and directly criticizes all the SJWs, lying journos and feminazies he is worse than useless.

And another:

Either he is with us, which is not the case, or he is against us.

Yep, they sure do give people a choice as to who and what they want to believe in.
10/28/14, 07:45   
Edited: 10/28/14, 07:52
@Zero

The funny thing is just how hard it is for people to wrap their heads around the fact that his points won't just fit snugly into one of the two "sides". Tribalism is a powerful force. Of course, many of them also seem to have missed that just because he takes some issue with liberal outrage on Twitter, that doesn't mean he shares anything at all in common with their worldview. He is an unabashed feminist and socialist.

It's like when I say something critical of Obama on facebook and I get likes from super conservative assholes I went to elementary school with. Just because I'm criticizing him doesn't mean I think he's a Muslim socialist. In fact, I wish he was a socialist!
10/28/14, 08:14   
Edited: 10/28/14, 08:41
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