What was the purpose of Gamergate?

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It would not necessarily be workable or good if everyone were held to a standard of 100% integrity. If a reviewer is getting paid by a company for positive reviews, I say good luck to him. Making a decent living in this economy is hard. If there is a market for insipid commentary and lies, and nobody gets hurt, then I see a net benefit from just leaving them be instead of hounding them out of their professions and social networks. If you don't like a community, you can move along to one you do like.

My cynical instincts are itching for me to point out that Internet witch hunts are often about power asserting control over new media as they asserted control over the old. Why, after all, would you spend your valuable time in a community that you loathe and feel that it was your right to dictate the terms of behaviour?

Gamergate had parts that would have been worth discussing but got taken over and ruined way before any actual progress was made and only ended up highlighting that nerd/geeks/gamers are still extremely touchy regarding their habits.

The Steps of Gamergate:
1) Involved an accusation about one Z. Quinn trading sexual favors for a good review [Note: This was made up by her ex-boyfriend and retracted later, but ignored]
2) Previous point stirred up arguments about ethics in Journalism [Fell important quickly to be replaced by worse things]
3) Arguments about portrayal of women in games and the games industry, whether it was good or needed change [started as a more civil discussion, but was quickly taken over]
4) Previous discussions de-evolve in panty-tossing (Heavy arguing about the place for women in games) and screaming/death threats at women in the game industry [which was totally not cool, death/rape threats are vile and disgusting]
5) Appalling treatment towards women in game industry triggers violent responses from feminists which triggers more violence from individuals who were using the discussion to troll for responses [this feed the flames of the constant argument, bickering, and violence]
6) All elements of proper behavior vanishes, leaving angry feminists and misogynists to engage in an endless cycle of response, counter-response, death/rape threat; so doing kicked out anybody trying to have a civil conversation and then the two factions attacked game journalists and members of the gaming community. More annoying threats
7) General media picks up the bickering and reports on it, making all gamers embarrassed over the actions of a few who should have been more fought against (the trolls mainly, they should have been called out for their business; I don't recall seeing anything like this happening)

Gamergate could have involved a discussion about ethics in game journalism and a needed talk about the portrayal of women in games. These talks are still needed, but won't happen until the more annoying bunch of both sides are removed. The ending points made geeks/nerd/gamers look really backward due to the actions of a few and all civil discussion collapsed leaving with the general population of the view/opinion that gamers are bizarre and other unflattering perceptions.

pathetic and disgusting this type of censorship is why the argument continues.

I should add that I wasn't talking about actual Tumblr users, but the stereotypes I picked up about them from GG proponents. I am sure the site is absolutely fine, and even if it's not I think it's neat that people of varying outlooks on life can have their own communities.

I'm confused. Is Condell insinuating that philosophy students are likely to be stupid or authoritarian? Why does he believe this? It seems counterintuitive.

But, yes, Condell perfectly illustrates some of what I was getting at.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)

If anything, it shows the state of certain parts of society when they come to the defense of Zoe Quinn, a terrible person (a manipulative whore in her own words).

I think George W. Bush is a terrible person, but if someone accused him of poisoning JFK then I'd defend him...

That Pat Condell video reminds me of an event we're having at our very own University of Canterbury.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1598739 ... pe=regular

It's basically about giving "No platform to hate speech", in this case, Germaine Greer, an individual known for her criticisms of transgenderism and such. While I thoroughly disagree with her views, I'm more interested in giving her a platform (that is actually just a well-disguised target) and dismantling her views rather than barring her from giving them. Fortunately, nobody seems interested in stopping her from talking...for now.

But you wouldn't gloss over the things that make them a terrible person, especially when they're what kicked the whole thing off.

There's a difference between looking for the truth and doing the same stuff the opposing side does.

I've tried to follow the Gamergate news but I ultimately lost touch. I hear people are on the "pro gamergate" side and I don't even know what that means. If I make a game and it gets a low review and somehow, a woman made the exact same game it should get the same review. If it gets a higher review because it was made by a woman, I believe that is wrong and sexist by definition. With that in mind, I have no idea what "side" I'm on. I am definitely against threatening people over this and believe people that have done so should be arrested.

I didn't mean to imply that Integrity in journalism doesn't matter. Rather, that taking minor players to task in an overt way for their lack of "integrity" when those cases are very trivial pushes back the norms of tolerance. This could be damaging something important, especially considering the degree of subjectivity and selectivity that can be at play.

Well, there was what happened with Assassin's Creed Unity, where the company didn't let anyone post any reviews until after the game had launched which meant that nobody who bought it or pre-ordered it knew about the issues that occurred on launch day. That really hurt them so I think.

There is a question mainly about whether games from big name publishers/designers are being reviewed for the game or because the big name publishers/designers paid money to the gaming websites/magazines and if that affects the review. It is a simple question that would be easy to find answers to.

The other important question is how women are treated in games and the industry might need change or whether it is currently good or bad. How much does the treatment need or not need to change? These questions should have encouraged discussion.

The main problem was that a loud vocal minority hijacked everything and then began trying to use "victimizing" (appearing as victims) to attack females/women in the game industry then reporters as well. It promptly made all gamers (myself included) look like creepy misogynist bastards or something. That the gaming community was made up of nearly all of these horrible people, who didn't really get punished either.

I mean why didn't more of these people get punished for the threats they made?

By players, I meant minor players in various forms of media.

It looks that way.

I've seen terms like gamer identity a lot with GG, but I hadn't considered that this would be a thing before. It seems strange in that other forms of media don't typically instil a feeling of cultural identity in their user base. I can't even think of an aspect of gaming that would do that. I wonder if this even is the case, or if the idea that there is a gamer subculture is something that arose out of GG. How can doing a thing define a subculture when everyone does that thing?

Last edited by Nebogipfel on 24 Feb 2015, 7:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The answer is simply: Yes, that happens, and it's not limited to gaming. Any industry wherein the products are subject to professional review is an industry where money buys opinions.



Do you mean women who play games or female characters within games?

If the former, it's important to note that it's feminists rather than women who are complaining about how they perceive the way women gamers (and developers) are treated. The complaints also portray 'gamers' as an outdated stereotype that bears little resemblance to the 'average' gamer - a ridiculous concept in itself, as gamers are about as diverse a group as you'll find.

If the latter, the same standard of criticism needs to be applied to how males are portrayed in games, and whether that has an effect on the player. Study after study has tried to demonstrate a correlation between violence in games (and other media) and violent crimes, but the findings are always the same - as gaming becomes more popular, violent crime diminishes. That is to say, there is no evidence to support the suggestion that human beings see games as anything other than virtual worlds that do not effect their perceptions of the real world. If anything, the more 'realistic' games are a reflection of our world. Our world informs the themes and concepts of the game world, not vice versa.

One of the biggest issues with the SJW anti-gamer narrative is that it's built on this bizarre supposition that a huge number of gamers are immature, bigoted, hateful psychopaths. It would take a huge leap of faith to believe that this is anything other than intentional, as reality simply wouldn't suit their agenda. That reality is as follows:

- A percentage of all humans are immature, hateful and/or bigoted.
- A percentage of most sub-categories of human are therefore immature, hateful and/or bigoted.
- It is not the responsibility of non-immature, non-hateful, non-bigoted people to take responsibility for the immature, hateful bigotry of people who infest their specific sub-category.

And let's face it, if we're going to judge every group of human beings by their vilest members we end up with:

All Christians are paedophiles.
As are all men.
And women.
They're also all murderers, liars, cheats and all-round scoundrels.



The main problem was that the loud vocal minority decided to respond in kind to the unified narrative of vilification of gamers by the other side. The result was a shit-slinging contest between immature asshats which drowned out the legitimate discussion that continues to this day, long after the dust has settled. GamerGate appears to have achieved a degree of success in line with its stated goals.



It did no such thing. I am not responsible for the stupid behaviour of some brat (adults can be brats too) with a keyboard and internet connection who thinks making hollow threats is somehow funny. Neither are you.



Because they weren't credible threats, they were the feeble ravings of immature douchebags.