Gamergate

[T. Brown 1st MRB]

I haven't seen any posts about this here. What are the opinions here? GIVE THEM ALL TO ME. I want an open discussion.

I personally think there are people wrong on BOTH sides, but for the majority, I'm for the people fighting for the ethical rights of game journalism. It is NOT about hating women in games, but it IS slowly evolving into hating hypersensitive professional victims making money off controversy with hypocritical arguments. Opening up donation drives so they can tweet. What the fuck is this shit?

Brianna Wu. Fem Freq. This new guy, Tariq, claiming harassment made him leave twitter when he actively searched his name online to find people disagreeing with his public articles and said they were harassing him for disagreeing.

It's all a bunch of bullshit really, no one is getting killed over video games, but if nothing else, it's important because a lot of people care. Whatever people care about is important I think, so I want opinions.

[J. Hill]

its just people out to make a fast buck the easy way. We have become a society of people who scream racism, discrimination, and harassment. To many activists in the world who will scream at the top of their lungs and then sue for an easy buck. Look at the woman who screamed discrimination against an airline because they would not give her a full unopened can of Diet Coke. Witnesses sitting next to her painted an entirely different picture of what happened. Unfortunately there are people who will do the same things in the gaming community. They should be banned from ALL GAMES. They will do their best to ruin the games for everyone and make a fast easy buck.

[M. Johnson 1st MRB]

I find it funny in all honesty.

I've read both sides of the arguments, and just watched it all unfold, and it's just people causing controversy for controversies sake. I disagree with alot of the gamergate actions, some of the harassment and doxxing is done by a small minority and isn't a good thing at all, but the SJW agenda (Brianna Wu. Fem Freq. This new guy, Tariq) is really to just make a quick buck and further careers and relevance. The fact is some of the games they comment on games they have never even played, and the arguments they put forth are pretty obsurd in some cases.

I'll leave this here.

[Ford 1st MRB]

We live in a society of victims.

Everyone is a victim of something. Racism, harassment, discrimination, violence, etc... I blame parents, let me explain. When I was growing up I played baseball. We were a pretty good team and won a lot of games, good enough to get the the championship game. We ended up losing by 1 run. We didn't get participation trophies, second place trophies, or whatever they give out now, we got a life lesson. If you want a trophy, try harder next time. Winners get trophies and losers get to watch. Nowadays, kids don't get exposed to life lessons, they get wrapped in bubble-wrap and sent out into the world thinking they are owed something. It's a "me society" these days. The world owes me something, and if I don't get what I want, I'll lay on the ground and kick my feet until I get it.

Violence is glorified in video games, true enough, but they also come with a warning label. If you don't want to see it, don't buy it. Not sure how much easier that could be. It's a fantasy world, were women are objectified and violence is expected. Since Pac-Man games have been about killing monsters, should Pac-Man be taken of the shelves since he eats monsters alive?

As an aside, can we find a better suffix than "gate" to attach to anything semi-controversial? It's been 42 some odd years since "Watergate", and they didn't attach gate to the end because it was scandalous, they did it because it was the name of the damn hotel.

That being said, what happened to Zoe Quinn is unfortunate and doesn't reflect well on the gaming industry. I don't however think it's a reflection of game developers as a whole. Whether or not she slept with all those guys is irrelevant, she was harassed by her ex-boyfriend, some trolls took it a few steps further, and it exploded from there. This is a male dominated industry, it always has been. Games are targeted to single males, the majority of gamers are single males, and the majority of game developers are males. It will hopefully open a few eyes to some changes that need to take place.

Edited June 29, 2015 by Ford 1st MRB

[Melnyk 1st MRB]

Here's s good example from 2012

Forward to 17:59

[Ultranator BAR]

There might be people trying to exploit this, but there are real people who have had their personal info released, and told they were going to die.

[J. Hill]

anonymity makes people brave. they think they won't be known or caught. Fortunately, its not always true and some do get caught. Not enough though.

[Englebretson 1st MRB]

I try to treat everyone equally. That's why I just decided to hate all of you. Especially you Johnson.

[A. Martin]

When it comes to threats on the internet, it's nothing new. I've gotten death threats before. Hell, not even for being gay. I've gotten death threats for just existing! Now, I'm not saying that it's as directly palpable as having my info shoved up on a forum and having someone say "Alright, there's that asshole Martin, go get'm!" But, I feel it does offer a perspective on the internet as a whole. It's full of assholes. What's more, these assholes will act like assholes just because they think it's funny. Now, tack that in with people who have a reasonable qualm about the gaming industry, and watch some random asshole wander in and go "Hey wait, I can stir shit up!"

What I'm trying to get at, is that just because a minority (A very small minority) of people are threatening people with the addition of them tacking on "Oh yeah, I'm a gamergater by the way!" Means absolutely nothing. I can call myself a weaboo fairykin and run around making obscene jokes about how I'd like to speckle you all in stardust. So that's like, a huge problem with the internet.

Short version: Gamergaters have some very valid points. I feel that their message is getting undercut by a bunch of assholes. As for Anti-Gamergate... The big dogs I see the most of, should probably just shut up, because what little I see of them makes them look like raving lunatics. Does that mean Anti-Gamergate is shit and has no good points? Nope. I imagine they have some good points too.

[Melnyk 1st MRB]

It's full of assholes.

Being an asshole is human nature. They are going to be in every form of media and anything to ever exist :/

[Armstrong 1st MRB]

I think GG has been very severely mistreated as a movement, and that only now is it starting to be taken seriously in terms of its concerns on gaming journalism ethics.

I also believe that situation was very much intentional on the part of their opponents, many of the most easily accessible sources on GG are absolute trash, but the average person does not know that, and if the opponents are able to make

the situation appear to be so toxic that its untouchable, then nobody is going to want to look into it. And bravo to them, I didn't want to touch the subject for the first 6-7 months it started going because of how crazy it looked. But morbid

curiosity drew me into doing some research, and now I am a GG supporter.

My views on the situation are fairly simple: many games journalists have been having proven unethical relationships with devs or companies that have not been disclosed to their audiences or have otherwise engaged in unethical behaviour,

and they have endeavoured to do their best to keep people's minds off of the issue of their unethical behaviours and onto what are essentially manufactured issues. The idea that women in games, or female gamers are somehow discriminated

by male gamers as a whole is complete BS, and I think we as a unit can probably testify to that based on our experiences on DoD:S or our female members can support that. Are all games going to appeal to women? No. Is everyone on a multiplayer

game going to be angel? No. But to claim that female gamers have any particular difficulty in the industry or communities compared to male gamers (who have abuse thrown at them as well, statistically more than female gamers if some stats are to believed).

GG was never about harassment against women or female gamers, and the issue was never about that, but journalists tried to turn the discussion into that so as to avoid having to be accountable for their poor behaviour.

Now, in regards to the accusations of harassment from GG which some people have reported faced, I find most of the accusations I have seen to be shoddy at best. Since GG is a twitter hashtag movement, and there is no real way of defining who is a

GG "member" without them using the hashtag, and there are no restrictions on using that hashtag. Anyone and their brother can use the hashtag for anything, and nobody can stop them. GG tried to create its own inner police force to scan the twitter feeds

keeping an eye on any misuses or abuses and encouraging other GG supporters to do mass reports to Twitter to have those accounts banned. Many of them stopped after they realised that their efforts were not being recognized by their opponents, and when

they realised that it shouldn't be their job in the first place, it should be Twitter's responsibility to come up with a method for a group to control the use of a hashtag. Furthermore, even when GG supporters GAVE Anti-GGs like Anita Sarkeesian enough evidence

and information to put some of the more prominent abusers or trolls on trial via the FBI, she did nothing! She didn't even recognize the fact that they gave her the information to help her.

They don't care about the "abuse" being thrown at them other than that it gives them ammunition to try and shoot holes into legitimate GG supporters, they don't really take it seriously. Its especially sickening when I've seen many opponents of GG commit

much of the same online abuse they accuse GG of, and they claim to run online abuse charities...its disgusting.

That's what really set me off onto GG's side. The fact that their opponents are enormous juvenile hypocrites on the whole, and the fact that most of GG arguments that I've seen have been able to backed up with more verifiable proof than those of the Antis which rely

more on belief or pseudo-academics.

In other news though, in regards to Zoe Quinn, it may interest some of you to hear that her boyfriend Gonji is appealing his case which she won over him, on the grounds that the Judge violated the First Amendment, and seems to have a pretty good shot of ending up in the Massachusetts Supreme Court, or at the very least being reviewed by a higher court.