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GamerGate


Moosh

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Oh, didn't knew about that. One spawned the other, but still. A lot of shit is happening recently XD

 

EDIT : it's in the link, but it's a good response to "gamers are dead"

 

Edited by The Governor
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I wasn't sure if it was something to do with the latest videos from Anita Sarkeesian. The standard 'woman explains how sexual objectification of women is rampant in video games so the internet becomes a rapist'. Ridiculous. :facepalm:

 

Yeah, i actually just watch those. Facepalmed a few times. Maybe we should create a thread for this, it'd be interesting to debate.

 

First I have heard of it :/

 

Usually when a word has 'Gate' as it's suffix, then it's usually a scandal of some sort.

 

Well... it kinda is. This is a direct follow up to the Kotaku incident, and it's nothing if not a scandal. Last time it was the Dorito Gate : p

Edited by The Governor
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Yeah, i actually just watch those. Facepalmed a few times. Maybe we should create a thread for this, it'd be interesting to debate.

 

Just so we're clear, I'm facepalming the vile reaction of some people to Anita's videos. Many of the game scenes in her videos made me cringe and validate her points.

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A simplification of the events as I saw it happen:

 

- A female developer (Zoe Quinn) was accused by her ex boyfriend of having sex with guys (including married dudes) while she was with him, and one of those was a gaming journalist. While the journalist didn't review her game, he did mention it on some articles and that was seen as corruption.

 

- Various sites rallied trying to expose that developer for this. Meanwhile, Zoe had posted some tweets trying to expose a foundation that allegedly "would give women a job as game developers" as fraud. These same sites that were against her then donated a truckload of money to it.

 

- Phil Fish (Fez developer) defends Quinn, and gets doxed. Now this is where it becomes fact or fiction because people actually accused him of doxing himself lol. As he has always been a controversial figure, who knows where the line ends. What is known, is that most of the credentials that allowed the doxing were stored online on a Dropbox account.

 

- Another developer says he was harassed sexually by Zoe, but later retracts. He got a pretty heavy bullying on twit after the accusation, so the retracting seemed forced and fanned the flames even more.

 

- Anita Sarkeesian posts a video about 4 or 5 days since the beginning of these events, and gets the normal reception of support and rejection from different parties. Except this time, since the whole situation is on fire already, an anonymous account threatens her with real info and she has to leave her home for safety

 

- Then, as journalism's credibility was being attacked, this article happens : Gamasutra - 'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over. and people went insane.

 

After that I lost track. Josh Whedon, other developers and actors, let's players, everybody's got something to say. But while #GamerGate is pretty much a poisoned tag associated with misoginy, a lot of normal people have taken it as a flag for "do not kill our identity, we just want to play games!".

 

If this post doesn't make sense... believe me, all that shit didn't make sense as it happened either.

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I've been in the thick of this since the beginning. Following everything very closely. So here's the deal....

 

About a month back female indie game developer Zoe Quinn (developer of Depression Quest) had a massive word pressed blog posted about her By her ex-boyfriend. A guy named Erjon. It was called "The Zoe Post" and it was huge. It accused her of sleeping with 5 different guys that are in the games industry. 3 of these guys have been confirmed. The other two have been kept out of it. Erjon didn't release their names and for some time there was speculation as to who the other two guys were. But, Erjon came back out and let people know that their speculations were not correct.

 

The two guys that really bring about allegations of corruption in games media and in the games industry in general are Nathan Greyson (current write for Kotaku and former writer at Rock, Paper, Shotgun) and Robin Arnott (a game developer who has also been on the judge's panel at Indiecade)

 

At first there were rumors that Nathan Greyson had reviewed Depression Quest and given it a favorable review. These rumors were spread by people who were not educated on the matter. Nathan Greyson had written a couple articles in which he referred to Depression Quest in a favorable light. I believe he called it "powerful" and linked to her game on Steam. Kotaku later release a statement that they didn't feel this was a conflict of interest because Nathan Greyson and Zoe's relationship didn't start until April when he had written about her on March 31st. This matter of days excuse didn't fly with a lot of people but it term of #Gamergate this really doesn't matter anymore.

 

Robin Arnott and the controversy surrounding his relationship with Zoe comes about because he was one of two judges on the panel of Indiecade. When Depression Quest won the Indiecade award over Papers, Please. Something many people didn't agree with. As Depression Quest is a text based game that is closer to a choose your own adventure book than it is to being an actual video game.

 

There is a lot of other controversy surrounding her. Including her sabotaging a Game_Jam and a contest to help get women into video games run by The Fine Young Capitalists. A feminist group that Zoe and her friend Maya Kramer doxxed. The Fine Young Capitalists also had their Indiegogo page hacked shortly after the Phil Fish hacking/doxxing and the TYFC page that was hacked had a message to /v/ saying it was retaliation for the hacking of Phil Fish. Which he claims /v/ was responsible for.

 

All this was the jumping off point for #Gamergate but in actuality it is it's own separate scandal. Commonly referred to as Quinngate, Quinnspiracy or Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

 

Internet Aristocrat an anti SJW youtuber made videos on the subject and actor Adam Baldwin posted them on Twitter with the hashtag #Gamergate. At the exact same time 10 separate gaming websites all released articles saying that "Gamers were dead" "Death of an identity" "Gamers are dead and the women that killed them" etc. etc. etc. 10 articles within a 48 hour period.

 

This further fueled the fire and led people to believe that corruption within games media is very real indeed. As this was an obvious coordinated attack with Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander leading the charge. It was at this point the games journalists pissed off a lot of people and #Gamergate blew up. Prominent Youtubers and gaming personalities like Total Biscuit, JonTron and Boogie2988 came out in defense of gamers and in some cases #Gamergate itself.

 

During all this people started discussing this stuff on Reddit and 4Chan. Over at Reddit in /r/ gaming. Over 20,000 comments were deleted by a mod called "El Chupacake". This mod was later seen chumming it up with Zoe Quinn and Patrick Klepeck (Giant Bomb) on Twitter. Thus in became apparent why the comments were being deleted.

 

Then further allegations of corruption begen with Patrica Hernandez from Kotaku when it was discovered she'd been writing dozens of articles about a game developer Anna Anthropy and her games. Patrica Hernandez was roomates with Anna Anthropy for a time. Furthermore, she wrote a few articles about Christine Love another developer who Ms. Hernandez was dating for a time. These articles have now been updated with disclosures at the bottom such as "Disclosure - Love and I are friends". Being that it has been a year and a half since many of these articles were written this did not satisfy many gamers since she should have disclosed the information back when the articles were written. Not after she had been caught. A similar issue to the Nathan Greyson debacle.

 

Yet another journalist with obvious conflicts of interest is Leigh Alexander. One of the first to write an article on how "Gamers are dead". While being an editior-at-large (her words not mine) at Gamasutra. She is also currently the head of a consulting company that serves game developers. Pretty possible that she gives her clients favorable press or at the very least exposure.

 

It has also now been revealed that these game journalists are all part of a Google group that is closed to the public called "Game Journalism Professionals". Where they get together and discuss strategies for pushing agendas, how to handle certain topics, what to report on, what not to report on etc. etc. etc. Now it's obvious why 10 articles saying "Gamers are dead" all came out within 48 hours. It was truly a coordinated attack.

 

Anyhow, I'm getting tired of typing. But, know that this is not even 5% of everything that's going on with this. You have game journalists on Twitter bashing gamers daily. One hashtag I saw was #DescribeAGamerIn4Words

there were things like....

disappointment to friends, family

belongs in the trash

current virgin, future murderer

and so on...

 

Gamers are simply tired of being attacked. All the "gamers are dead" articles cited gamers as misogynist, neckbeared, bigot, basement dwellers and gamers are tired of this rhetoric.

 

We want the politics and agenda kept out of games journalism. We want transparency. We want true inclusivity. We don't care about race, gender or sexual preference. We just want to game and to talk about games. Plain and simple. But, that is too hard for games journalists these days they want to talk about rape culture, misogyny, feminism etc. etc. etc.

 

They keep stating the only people who want this stuff kept out of gaming are "cis white males". That brought about another hashtag #Notyourshield where women, transgender, gay, blacks, latinos and other minorities. All united under the #Notyourshield hashtag to say "We're not white cis males and we don't want your agenda in games either"

 

This goes on and on as you can no doubt tell. New things happen everyday regarding this stuff. Check out Internet Aristocrat's videos Mundane Matt's videos and the #Gamergate and #Notyourshield hashtags for more information. There is a ton of stuff going on with this out there. Erik Kain also wrote a decent article about #Gamergate on Forbes. A number of new gaming/tech sites have been born and are covering the scandal also.

 

Techraptor.net

Goodgamers.us

Gamesnosh

and

Nichegamer.net

 

all have unbiased accounts of what's going on. That's it for me. It's exhausting to talk about this stuff. I won't bring it up again. But, I will check in on this thread to see if you guys get an idea of what's going on. Hopefully, this thread won't be deleted. That is a common thing around the internet these days. But, if this thread does go down. Please don't ban me. I was just answering a question and I love this site.

Edited by DeathMask Divine
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  • 1 month later...

It's a really ugly side to online gaming. The thing is I like gaming, it's fun. What I don't like are all the misogynistic, racist, homophobic creeps who think it's their exclusive domain and that the web give them the right to bully, intimidate and humiliate those they perceive as "the enemy." The truth is most of them are just maladjusted cowards, some I suspect are more worrying, the genuine sociopaths amongst them. It of course goes way beyond gaming, it's just a convenient platform to get all worked up about, really it's about a trend amongst some men who simply hate women and can't stand to hear anything from any woman that might challenge their massive but exceedingly fragile egos.

 

It's amazing how a woman can say "hey, I think there is a problem with sexism in [subculture]" and then she gets a tsunami of rape and death threats and then people deny that misogyny is a problem.

What. The. Fuck.

 

I try to tell people "DO NOT be fooled by the morons, not all gamers are immoral dickbags. Most of us are pretty normal. It's just that this whole issue has given us a bad name due to a militant vocal minority showing their lack of education."

 

 

I know this thread is two months old, but I had to bump cuz of this:

 

Actress Felicia Day Opens Up About GamerGate Fears, Has Her Private Details Exposed Minutes Later | ThinkProgress

Edited by oversoul53
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I was just about to bring GAMERGATE up by starting a new thread about it, I didn't know all the stuff about the Lady sleeping around and stuff.

 

What I do know is that know woman gamers and journalist are being threatened with Rape and murder because of whatever is going on. I personally think it is Fracked up, I just read the article about Felicia Day and how now she is scared for her life due to GAMERGATE and being Doxxed.

 

COWARDS!!!!!!

Edited by Nobodygrotesque
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The whole GamerGate thing has become incredibly stupid and sad. I know the vast majority of gamers aren't like this at all. Unfortunately, the lowest common denominator is the loudest. It's bullshit. Things like this are why I lack faith in humanity. Also, times like these makes me hate social media. It's done more harm than good.

Edited by ShadowStar83x
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The whole GamerGate thing has become incredibly stupid and sad. I know the vast majority of gamers aren't like this at all. Unfortunately, the lowest common denominator is the loudest. It's bullshit. Things like this are why I lack faith in humanity. Also, times like these makes me hate social media. It's done more harm than good.

 

I agree on the social media, it seems crazy to me the things I see explode on the Internet. I don't know much about all of this, but from what I've read it's rediculous along with so many other things that get blown way out of proportion these days. I don't even understand 1/2 the posts I see on Twitter, it looks like a foreign language to me. :p

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