Slashdot Mirror
Combating Recent, Ugly Incidents of Misogyny In Gamer Culture
ideonexus writes: 2490 gamers, developers and journalists have signed an open letter supporting inclusiveness in the gaming community after indie game developer Zoe Quinn received backlash and harassment when her ex-boyfriend posted false accusations that she traded sex for favorable reviews of her game and feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian was driven from her home after receiving death and rape threats for her videos illustrating the way some mainstream games encourage the commoditization of and violence against women. The harassment has prompted geek-dating advice columnist Harris O'Malley to declare the backlash the "Extinction Burst of Gaming Culture," the last reactionary gasp before the culture shifts to become more inclusive.
Or, you know, there's a lot of men who are childish assholes and misogynists.
Because, really, death threats? Threats to rape her? The crap I've seen in the coverage about this pretty much means this isn't hand-wringing and moralizing ... this is a sign of some pretty terrible (if not criminal) behavior.
Some people get online and become complete and utter sociopaths. Others don't seem to need to be online.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
That's pretty laughable given the amount of evidence. Her ex-boyfriend didn't post false accusations. Among the things that were posted were Zoe's own words, tweets, facebook message, ok cupid posts, etc. Is Slashdot also ran by SJW's that refuse to see things for what they really are?
The author of the Vice article also has connections to Zoe Quinn, Anita, and the other white knight/SJW "journalists." Did you not even bother doing research on this before making a crap slashdot post?
That's the beauty of facts. They still remain facts even if you disagree with them.
Posting anon because I enjoy my job.
For some reason, slashdot has mostly ignored this topic for the past couple weeks, and now we get an article that revels in moralistic naysaying while ignoring what keeps this going.
The recent "ugliness" is not just a product of sexism and misogyny. To be fair, women have been harassed. To be even more fair, not all women who have been harassed have been harassed by "gamers".
The fiasco that has now grown into "Gamergate" (not my term) is not easy to relate in few words, but I will summarize that it is a reaction by enthusiast gamers against a clique of prominent video games journalists, writers, and indie developers who have been using their personal connections to promote each other's works and political ideology, as well as exclude those who do not toe the line.
It began when the ex-boyfriend of indie developer Zoe Quinn made a blog post detailing with evidence how Ms Quinn cheated on him with at least five other people, as well as perceived attempts by her to emotionally manipulate him. (http://thezoepost.wordpress.com/) Among individuals named in the post were Nathan Grayson (a writer for Gawker Media's Kotaku and former writer at Rock, Paper, Shotgun) and Robin Arnott (a judge at the Indiecade independent games competition that later went on to give Ms Quinn's game an award). Initially, this post was ignored by games journalists, and was circulated in online gaming forums. However, many forums deleted any and all topics concerning the matter, including the largest reddit thread deletion in history (with over 20K comments deleted; http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2dz0gs/totalbiscuit_discusses_the_state_of_games/) concerning youtube commentator TotalBiscuit's response to Ms Quinn allegedly using a false DMCA request to take down one of the first videos discussing the subject (http://themundanematt.tumblr.com/post/95428752119/dmca-notice-and-removal).
Investigation by redditors and members of various boards on 4chan soon uncovered that Ms Quinn allegedly pointed her twitter followers to critique a new game charity designed to help female game designers have their ideas actualized because she felt the charity's profit-motivated goals and its policy towards transwomen (biological males who identify as women) were oppressive (http://static.fjcdn.com/large/pictures/60/24/6024fb_5271447.jpg). When the creator of the charity attempted to seek promotion from major gaming journalist sites, he was told that since Ms Quinn had issues with the charity, no promotion would be possible (knowyourmeme.com/photos/814183-quinnspiracy).
While specific written pieces promoting Ms Quinn's work were actually short in supply, further investigations showed that the relationships of other journalists to their subjects were less tenuous. Patricia Hernandez of Kotaku was shown through previous twitter conversations to have lived with and possibly had a romantic relationship with Anne Anthropy, an indie developer she directly promoted in several articles. Ben Kuchera of Polygon, among others, was shown to be a supporter of Ms Quinn on Patreon, a site designed to crowd-fund stipends to content-creators. In response to these issues, the two above mentioned games journalism sites posted clarifications and/or updates to their positions on conflicts of interest, noting that they would attempt more honest journalism in the future, as well as in the case of Kotaku disallowing writers to contribute to subjects' Patreon accounts.
This is when hell started breaking loose. Prominent games journalists and indie developers cried out on twitter that Kotaku and Polygon
I love when people use the acronym "SJW," it's even more efficient than "misandry." It says "I am unapologetically backwards as fuck on a wide variety of issues, to the point that I am upset at the existence of people who are opposed to my backwardness."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You don't get it, do you?
Zoe and Anita do not harm us in any way. People like Ben Kuchera, K.Thor Jensen and such, do.
You haven't paid attention in class. And as far as I know, Ben Kuchera is a guy, not a woman, so I am not misogynist for calling him on his insults and doxxing threats. Look them up.
Not to mention Phil Fish producing a massive internet meltdown calling everyone a rapist (including YOU) and telling aspiring developers to quit. I think Phil Fish is also not a woman. Also, he didn't do almost any work on Fez, look at the credits. He was just an idiot hogging fame from a team you'll never hear about.
I am a developer. I was attacked by the people claiming to be on my side for suggesting that bias shouldn't exist. For supporting equality. But you know what? They don't want equality. They want to be few and rare so they can maintain their "special" status.
Well, unfortunately, I feel that in the case of Anita, some of it was brought on herself. Her videos she has been using to show how games are portraying women in bad ways were in most cases taken completely out of context and twisted to fit her preconceived opinions. In one case using a section of Hitman which took place in an adult entertainment club, and saying that the women in the level are there only to be beaten/killed and used as distractions, when in fact, that is absolutely not the case. You LOSE points for beating on them. You are meant to AVOID them, just like most other people in Hitman, as they are not your target, you are not to kill people who are not your target, and yet, she makes a video of her own play-through where she intentionally kills them, and then says that is the only purpose for them being there.... Its like saying TV's are bad because you can bash someone over the head with a TV and demonstrating that you can do that fact, when in reality, the only behavior that is bad is doing that specific behavior.
And when she gets called out on that fact, she doesn't want to hear it, and disables comments so that it isn't shown what a load of crap she is spewing forth.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"