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For Game Developers, It's About the Labor of Love
Nerval's Lobster writes With "GamerGate" and all the debates over who counts as a "gamer," it's easy to forget that games are created by people with a genuine love of the craft. Journalist Jon Brodkin sat down with Armin Ibrisagic, game designer & PR manager for Coffee Stain Studios, the Swedish studio that made Goat Simulator, to talk about why they built that game and how it turned into such a success. Brodkin also talked to Leszek Lisowski, founder of Wastelands Interactive, about the same topic. While these developers might debate with themselves (and others) over whether to develop games for hardcore gamers, or jump on the mobile "casual gaming" bandwagon, they'll ultimately in it because they love games — a small but crucial detail that seems too easy to forget these days.
"GamerGate" and all the debates over who counts as a "gamer,"
I heard vicious shouts that gamers were dead, and those didn't come from Gamergate . . .
"Labor of love" - right. That's why game developers are so exploited that EA got into trouble with CA labor laws.
You get together with a bunch of friends with drinks and snacks and play a game.
Fun to design.
Fun to play.
If you're more worried about your metrics, you're doing it wrong.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Really why bring that into a story that's about people who are passionate about creating great games. Gamergate is about people playing the victim card, and pulling a shakedown on an industry. Sad for use we made it work for them. Who cared about Sarkesian before this ?
I agree! Stamp out "gamergate"! No more coverage! Play on!
Wait, so you're telling me that Goat Simulator was NOT an April Fools joke? Wow... there sure are a lot of fools out there.
Except for those basement-dwelling gamergate scumbags, who decided to act out what they were being accused of.
Which group are you talking about, the "journalists" or the "gamers"?
But you're right. Basically the entire thing is fake. The whole thing about "gamers sending devs death threats" is actually just a bunch of trolls from Something Awful who aren't even involved trying to play each group against each other for lulz. (I'd link to the thread, but once they got caught them sending identical death threats to both "GGers" and "anti-GGers", they deleted it.)
Unfortunately people fell for it, so we got a bunch of stories about the "rampant misogyny amongst gamers" and bullshit like that while ignoring the death threats sent to GGers. (White men receiving death threats isn't news, after all.)
At its core, GamerGate is gamers upset about how devs can and do buy reviews from game journalists. The problem is that the whole "labor of love" thing swings both ways: you have devs who are passionate about making games and reporters who are passionate about playing them, so you end up with this relationship where the devs basically pay off the reviewer to give them coverage. Sometimes in the form of sexual favors, sometimes just by giving them builds before anyone else can.
But, yeah, just about anything you read about GamerGate is fake and is just another method of pushing forward the annoying progressive "nerds are misogynists" meme we hear about constantly. (See Slashdot's monthly "why aren't women going into IT" concern trolling articles.)
Yeah because political corruption on a grand scale should be ignored, right?
So, next time you get death threats against you and your family, I hope everyone dismisses you as a low-life playing the "victim card". Grow the fuck up.
I think it's too easy to justify grueling jobs with bad work conditions and inadequate compensation by saying "Oh but the people who take them do the work out of loooove!" We do the same thing with teachers: Their jobs suck, their hours suck, their pay sucks, they deal with absurd bullshit, but all that is ok because allegedly, "they loooove kids and receive intrinsic rewards from their work."
We don't think this way about accountants or dentists. We don't expect them to loooove replacing fillings or mastering actuarial tables. We pay them so that their jobs are worthwhile even without the love. And I wish we would apply this standard to all jobs. A coding job where you produce games should be compensated like a coding jobs where you produce financial software, or anything else.
Absolutely not. The reason Gamergate seems forced and staged is that everybody deals with exactly the same bullying and discrimination in gaming. That is, from gamers. It's worthy of applause that game developers are taking a stand against sexism, but they are already required to do that by laws barring discrimination by employers. If people went to the media to brag about how they didn't murder anybody today, would we reward them? Were game developers not doing that, then they would be subject to expensive litigation and potentially, fines.
People are being shown the ugly side of the gaming community as it applies to sting one group and only one group. Now get into some online games and tell them you're black, hispanic, asian, white, rich, poor, or practically any other descriptor you can come up with and you'll find the same thing. Most of the time, nobody will care, and sometimes, you'll be bullied. Women do not have a monopoly on victimhood and we all need to have thick skin when dealing with random strangers who have no reason to care how we feel; especially when we're competing with them. Duh.
Gamegate is happening because it gets views, which generates ad revenue, and it's a good public relations stunt for game developers. That's all there is to it.
The -gate in Watergate technically isn't a suffix; it's the actual name of the hotel. Or what other case of widespread corruption are you thinking of that was almost exclusively referred to as a -gate?
From the article: "In both cases, the developers suggest the best strategy is to make games they're passionate about." But in order to make games you're passionate about, sometimes you have to "pay your dues" to the incumbents by developing games you're not passionate about in order to gain access to platforms suitable for games you're passionate about.
Startup studios not staffed by long-time veterans of the mainstream video game industry have been limited in what platforms they can code for: either PC (Windows, OS X, GNU/Linux) or touch-driven mobile devices (iOS and Android). And the limits of these platforms in turn limit the choice of genre. PC isn't the best for "party" style games designed around sharing the screen with IRL friends because few people think to put a PC in the living room. And without directional controls and trigger buttons usable by an application, touch-driven mobile devices severely limit the controls that can be implemented: a platform game essentially has to be an endless runner like Canabalt or Temple Run instead of an exploration-oriented Metroidvania. I'm aware of exceptions, such as a home theater PC (hi Hairyfeet) or a mobile device with buttons (Xperia Play phones and JXD tablets), but I've been repeatedly told they're nowhere near popular enough to provide enough sales to sustain a studio.
But lately I've been told that PlayStation seems to be the best family of platforms to which a startup developer can port games in genres traditionally associated with consoles. Sony Computer Entertainment has been courting indie developers with recent steps to make the developer approval process closer to that of iOS, such as the Pub Fund for worthwhile timed-exclusive games and the Developer Program for PlayStation Suite. Or are people who play indie games also people who "nevar forget" about Sony's past (XCP, Other OS, George Hotz, etc.)?
It's about unethical journalists. And those same journalists have been trying for weeks now to deflect this focus away from them and pretend it's about sexism, changing gamer culture, etc. so they themselves don't have to answer for a decades-long games journalism tradition of "journalists" being in bed with the very companies they're supposed to be covering (through advertising, bribes, press releases disguised as "previews," etc.)
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
If Nathan Grayson, Patricia Hernandez, et al were Republicans, Gamergate would be handled exactly like the journalism scandal that it is. The corrupt writers would lose their jobs, their employers would acknowledge the seriousness of the situation and at least attempt to convince us that that it wouldn't happen again, and the rest of their ilk would be watched like a hawk for evidence of similar transgressions for a long, long time.
But no. Because the perpetrators were extreme leftists, they're afraid that the scandal might give folks like Fox News and Limbaugh political ammo*, so there was a complete media blackout, the likes of which I've never seen before (not a SINGLE article detailing the corruption, on ANY tech/gaming site, for a week). Another part of the blackout was blanket censorship in user forums/comments, up to and including reddit and--no bullshit--4chan. IMO this censorship of users merely discussing the scandal is still the most oppressive (and damning) anti-GG measure of all.
And then when the blackout didn't work, they colluded in a synchronized shotgun blast of articles to slander their core audience and intimidate any dissenters among them. The long-running smear campaign that began with the "Gamers are Dead" articles continues to this day, and the popularity of Gamergate is the long-running response to it. Every criticism and call for integrity is met with completely irrelevant accusations of misogyny and right-wing motivations. Gamers are (rightly) astonished and appalled to see corruption defended so vigorously (and uniformly).
And now that the smear campaign isn't working either, anonymous threats are used as an excuse to again slander the movement (this time as terrorists) and completely ignore the corruption. So of course as the smear campaign ramped up, the popularity of Gamergate ramped up accordingly--I think it's over 100K tweets per day now. And the gaming press, having addressed almost none of its ethics issues (to say nothing of its contempt for the gaming community), regularly feigns disbelief that Gamergate hasn't "burned out" yet in one-sided opinion pieces that, if anything, more than prove the need for the movement.
The crazy thing is that Gamergate itself is largely leftist. I am right-wing on many issues, but I've been impressed by (and learned something from) the integrity of the vast majority of left-leaning individuals in Gamergate. They just want journalism they can trust. They want the bad eggs removed, even if the bad eggs share many of their political stances. They understand that circling the wagons to protect "the cause" and "do good work" is likely to result in far more harm to the cause in the long run.
I see some of the mainstream media has now taken notice, and is just as happy as the tech press to pretend the journalistic lapses and cover up never happened, and to slander Gamergate as right-wing misogynist terrorists, all to support the invented narrative. It's an all too familiar story to those of us who've seen the mainstream media portray DVD ripping as grand theft auto, net neutrality as communism, or Jack Thompson as a defender of morality. But in this case, unbelievably, even here on Slashdot there hasn't been a Gamergate article yet that doesn't go out of its way to frame the whole issue in terms of misogyny and harrassment (much less an article that's pro- or even neutral). Is slashdot politically motivated to misrepresent this issue? The question is moot, because all those articles got 700-1200 replies each, so the clickbaiting is motivation enough. As far as we know, slashdot's editors are kicking themselves for not praising Jack Thompson years ago as a hero activist.
* not an invalid fear, but you have to cross that bridge when you come to it. If you try to pre-emptively murder the truth then you get no sympathy when it blows up in your face.
Back in the days of print, sure, get a dozen mags in your pocket and you can pass your crap off as gold, for a while anyway. But now? There's a billion gamer websites and blogs, and anybody posting a fluffy review will get eaten alive by their readers, pull that a couple times and you're credibility is toast.
I'm not asking rhetorically, I honestly don't know, I don't follow the gaming press much. I don't see how they can have enough influence to be worth paying off.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
On the contrary, when a job is paid too much, people are doing it for the sake of money and not because they love to do it. Think of the politicians. They don't care that much about ideas, they are into opinions, and more favorably the ones that will get them the cash. That's why we get all these crappy laws.
Think of a fireworker paid a million dollars. At that rate, you'll get a bunch of real assholes that will do anything to get the job because of the money, but when the day comes they have to risk their life to save your ass, they'll just flee saying "f**k, that's not worth it".
So while I totally agree with you on the low pay justified by passion bullshit, my point is that we should not rely on high pay to expect the jobs to be done correctly. A job is done correctly iff the guy in charge is happy with his job done correctly.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
There is a very good reason that people in high passion jobs have shit compensation. They're easily replaceable.
There is no journalism scandal.
You have:
1. GamerGate nuts focussing on a developer who an ex-boyfriend with "issues" claimed was sleeping with journalists to get better reviews. Turned out the journalist has never written about any of the developer's games. GG participants changed subject, claimed the issue was her sex life (who the hell cares? Jesus!). So: SCANDAL ONE: NOT ABOUT JOURNALISM.
2. GamerGaters then get upset that a "feminist" has written an editorial claiming that the games industry is catering for a non-existent market if they insist on aiming games at some kind of crude stereotype the industry refers to as a "gamer". GGers rant, rave, call feminist names, a minority make death threats with mixed reactions from the GG "community" - some condemnation, but plenty of victim blaming - and even persuade Intel to drop advertising with said publication. No hint anyone in industry paid for article, no hint article bettered anyone financially beyond advertising dollars and author's royalties. Article very clearly an earnestly and honestly expressed opinion. SCANDAL TWO: NOT ABOUT JOURNALISM.
3. With women developers in particular feeling that the viciousness of the campaign against the feminist in #2 crossed the line frequently into misogyny, and with many also concerned that anyone expressing a pro-diversity point of view was being labeled, as an insult, by the term "Social Justice Warrior", some start to speak out. One, who had even been told by a GameGater that if she didn't like games she should go off and write her own (she, uh, does) retweeted an amusing image meme making fun of some of the more bizarre quotes and positions she's been challenged by. Within days she's the victim of serious death threats, and has to flee her home with her family. GamerGaters generally answer that (1) it wasn't us, (2) we don't believe in that kind of thing, and (3) she was asking for it. In this case, no journalism is involved. SCANDAL THREE: NOT ABOUT JOURNALISM.
So, there are the THREE major events in GamerGate industry. Not one involves journalism, albeit the first kinda did for the 30 seconds it took to discover that while a journalist was involved, no journalism took place.
It's not about journalism. It never was. Stop pretending otherwise. And if you're going to pretend it is, choose a new hashtag, and start tweeting stuff about, you know, actual journalism scandals. Clue: the first time you tweet some whine under that hashtag about "SJWs", you've probably stopped talking about journalism.
A job is done correctly iff the guy in charge is happy with his job done correctly.
This is a reliable way to fuck up a software project
Nope, it is not. Not by any stretch. Gamergate is based around made up 'issues' as an excuse to attack people who point out the rampant sexism.
Ganmergate is a bunch of people who realize the industry is changing and they don't like change.
They use propaganda, lies, and threats to push an ideological agenda.
They are a hate group.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I feel the same way about it, and I'll say so even though this thread is being modded without integrity. -gate is added to terms so that we're signaled to be outraged. It's an overused media trick that has gotten trite. Just adding "gate" as a suffix doesn't make something as serious an issue as the POTUS having thugs break into a hotel to steal documents from political opponents...
See, this is another example what I mean. Half the references to "gamergate" say that the scandal is sexism in the industry. The other half say it's a response to combating sexism in the industry. But either way, employment discrimination on the basis of gender is illegal. So, are game developers confessing to having broken the law up until some recent epiphany that they shouldn't do that? Either way, this whole thing becomes more dubious.
Let's keep this simple: Don't be a dick to people and obey the law. That applies to FAR more than just sexism, do I don't see why we're narrowing in on one group. If game developers have really treated women that poorly for so long that this is necessary then we should be reading about lawsuits and fines, not online arguments and drama.
The more of a circus this becomes without any legitimate action or litigation related to it, the more it looks like theater for publicity and clicks.
I should also mention that if there is no legal action taken, then this is crying wolf and doing that will only worsen sexism.
From everything I've read about the subject:
The journalist did mention her game. It wasn't a review but was definite positive exposure for a game that would not have gotten if they were not close friends. The reason her sex life became an issue was that it seemed to involve a lot of journalists and marketing people. Conflicts of interests and what not. The sex aspect was central but not because of the sex; more the close personal relationships (which sex is). Of course there were a lot of jokes about it. Additionally there was a bunch of stuff about journalists funding games and judges from some indie game competition having monetary reasons to want certain games to win.
Is your second point about the 10 or so articles put out by separate publications that totally aren't colluding to write their own narrative declaring that "gamers are dead" and everyone that disagrees with them is part of that group? I can see why you think that's not about journalism... Or is it about the mailing list they were all a part of discussing stories and what to print?
The interesting thing is those female developers all seemed to have friendships with the people implicated in the whole ordeal. Other female developers and gamers that weren't part of that same friend-group don't seem to share your one-size-fits-all-women mentality. Lady makes fun of people but it's harassment when they responded and made fun of her? How do you expect people to respond when you accuse them of something they didn't do. Should they not say "we didn't do that"? None of the threats have been shown to come from this junk at all. In fact, from what I've read any identified threats have come from third-party assholes just trying to stir shit up. It is always advised not to advertise death threats because that just gives the threatener what they want and encourages more but a few of these women seem more interested in broadcasting their threats than reporting them to the police. Is this what you mean by "they're asking for it"?
The SJW thing in ancillary to the journalism. The journalists happen to be part of the "SJW" clique and used trigger words like "misogyny" to get people's brains to shut down so they could deflect blame. The whole thing has a striking similarity to the "donglegate" fiasco from a few years back.
Purely supply and demand. The amount of people who go in computer science or what have you to start making games is crazy. Stupid mini-games aside, the effort/knowledge/skill it takes to make even an average game is absurd compared to most other type of applications, yet programmers flock to that industry in droves. That lets companies be more picky.
This is in contrast to average, more business-oriented fields (law, banking, data, etc), that can be interesting if you're into that stuff, but doesn't have the same kind of appeal. Very very few people get out of school thinking "Damn, i can't wait to write the next stack to handle SWIFT messages!". Thats why developers working for big banks in NYC make a crazy amount of money.
There's no money to be made in a field a lot of people find fun/easy/exciting, because too many people are willing to do it for peanuts (there's a reason so many open source projects have terrible UI... very few people get excited about UX development). Find a niche that interests you if you want to make money.
You can't be a special snowflake if you look like every other snowflake.
Labor of love? Goatse simulator? You are freaking me out.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh for the love of... isn't it awfully convenient how when something negative is done, it's somehow not done by the group? So tell me, how does one become part of Gamergate? Is there an initiation ceremony, certifications, physical qualification, etc? Of course not, only think you need to do is to post something in the name of the 9 letter hashtag. So, yea Gamergate is a crazy easy thing to be part of, and as a result, it's partially made up of legit crazies and trolls. Just accept that and move on. Even groups that require more dedication (eg. feminist activists) have there share of crazies. Gamergate with no way to weed out the nutcases and it's low bar for entry has things even worse.
That's why y'all are harassing the women, and not the corrupt journalists, right? The entire movement has been spearheaded by misogynists from the very beginning.
Brianna Wu: *retweets meme*
GamerGaters: *dox her, send multiple violent rape & death threats*
Man, what a double standard those SJW's have, calling the latter "harrassment" and not the former! It's clear that they're of the same scope and intensity, right?
Yeah those people who 'point out rampant sexism' are claiming victimhood to shield themselves from criticism. This is no different than democrats who race bait anyone who criticizes their positions (republicans used to do this with 'christian shaming' back in the day). Sarkeesian's videos have been thoroughly debunked at a logical and factual level (it's not hard to do). The whole thing blew up because of the evidence of journalist, site, and network collusion to push this narrative. The sites that allowed open discussion of the topic were attacked.
If you care to know, here's a pretty good summary, with a slightly humorous intro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
just in case anyone thinks 'race baiting' is a made up term.
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
I think it gained the traction it did because it mirrors the same politics at a societal level. Also, there are those who've been saying "no one cares" to shame others away from it.
Literally identical death threats - word for word ignoring names and addresses - were sent to GamerGate supporters.
Weirdly you've never heard about those and no one "had to flee their house" over them, probably because they were directed at men who are used to the crap you get on the Internet.
The death threats are coming from trolls who want to smear gamers and promote drama. Drama that Brianna Wu was promoting as well, up until the same trolls targeting GG got her too.
Except for one thing, they don't experience discrimination, certainly not at the 'epidemic' levels stated by Anita and friends. These are the same kinds of lies spouted by that inane 'itsonus.org' campaign. In fact, most gamers don't give a shit at all what you are, as long as you play well. Online gaming is a great equalizer in a lot of ways. The only people who get shit on along race/sex boundaries are people who make a point of telling everyone and then behaving in ways that draw ire. All that does is load everyone up with ammo for the next trashtalk session and give them excuses to use it. Most people used to learn how to handle this in gradeschool. I can see the PC enforcement there has helped in spades.. now we have adults who cry like babies when someone calls them a name.
The ugly side? What? a few trolls and some trashtalkers? Every community has that, and history has shown that it requires draconian controls to stamp even small amounts of that out, which is detrimental to the point of having that community in the first place. People need to grow thicker skins and get over themselves.
It does generate views and ad revenue, but mostly for RPS, polygon, kotaku, arstechnica, and the other colluding sites. In contrast, you'll find that many on the pro gamergate side are purposely not taking ad revenue for their coverage of it.
this one for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
What all this has shown me is how a lot of the major video game site journalists despise their audience. Just like the XBox One launch and backlash and the Mass Effect backlash the gaming press have never been on our side. Tht's what is truly sad about Gamergate.
How about the ugly side that you can't question whether this PR stunt is genuine without being marked a troll on Slashdot? The Gamergate crowd ARE gamer trolls, and they're infecting communities outside of their games to lower the quality of conversation. It's not that terrible a thing to deal with, but a nuisance is a nuisance. They're doing nothing more than engineering social viruses to disrupt communities and get attention.
I have one question for them: If they have so much proof of gender discrimination in the gaming industry, why are they trolling the Internet instead of taking to the courts to do something about it? We have the means in place to correct that, and they're not a moderation drop down menu on Slashdot, a comment field on Youtube, nor a comment thread on Reddit.
You're right that people need to grow up and have thicker skin, but I don't think there's actually a problem with that. It's just a media circus for attention. Even those who don't accept ad revenue are building a following and name for themselves. Mark my words: come their next topic, they will be taking that revenue, or they'll be hired by yellow journalism outfits.
If I'm wrong and they're just trolling us for fun, then they're probably mentally unstable.
Exactly. I was modded troll for questioning the narrative. Whose worse known for this? The gamer community or the 'social justice warriors'? Who is censoring who? The anti-gamergate sites: polygon, RPS, kotaku, arstechnica, and even 4chan are censoring any talk about this, and have done so from the beginning. The 'journalists' from these sites colluded with each other on a 'gamejournopros' mailing list for years. Search it out if you want. Several of the people working for these sites have had outright sexual relations with at least one of these feminists, and socio-economic ties with another, with XOXO, with DIGRA etc. The pro gamergate sites are allowing open conversation on the topic and at least one has been DDOS'd for it. With conflicts like this, the side doing the censoring, social blackmail, and emotional pleading is the side whose motives I question. The gamers and gaming community are just the latest targets of these social parasites. I guess the biggest reason I care is that this problem is affecting the entire society, not just one niche community.
The term 'troll' has been so thoroughly abused at this point that its new definition is effectively "one who does not agree with the bandwagon."
with the exception of the corny intro, this vid is a decent summary. if you care to know more, watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
I agree it's a label that's been thoroughly abused. That doesn't mean that it's a good idea to always discount what's inside.
The problem is what one person considers friendly trashtalk another considers 'being a dick', so enforcing subjective rules like that just gives people opportunities to abuse the enforcement system and become dicks themselves. I still think the "grow a thicker skin and stop crying" is the better cultural attribute to cultivate. Secure, mentally healthy people don't let names bother them to the point where they need 'trigger warnings,' nor do they take hyperbolic troll comments as life threatening.
To lie is to knowingly make a false statement. To prove that I have lied requires showing that my statement is false and showing that I knew it was false at the time that I made it. You have done neither. The first post I see on your link says, "Nerds should be constantly shamed and degraded into submission."
I don't see any links to stories regarding lawsuits over employment discrimination.
There's also the fact that nobody is going to join in a good-faith social effort because they're threatened and "forced" to. Bullying is not an answer to bullying. When I see somebody use slurs, I tell them what I think of that. It can be seen on this profile. But I don't think we need a movement to inspire people to war with, harass, and bully each other while disrupting communities just because some people want ad revenue or attention. That's not how you get people to play nice. That's how you start trouble.
It's. Not. About. Journalism.
Just because you keep saying that doesn't make it true.
Please explain.
From my experience in the software industry, good managers are worth their weight in gold.
Teachers are not easily replaceable, and yet for the work they do their compensation is abysmal.
Their problem is a different one. There's many factors involved as to why people become teachers, and why they stay in the profession. Simply though, they stay because of job security, and the knowledge/fear that changing careers into a different profession would be very hard (and in the short-term at least involve a pay cut).
The developers, artists, and even the QA staff love their jobs and work very hard. It is the evil publishing companies with bad management and evil treatment of the staff that needs to change. Publish a new game and lay-off 75% of the staff. The creatives quit and move on. Happens all the time. How anyone would want to work in the game industry is a wonder, if they do work in the industry many quit after the first ship-date.
The indie market is different. I am talking about the mainstream classic game publishers.
I don't want to understate that doxing is wrong but there is a difference between a dox of a person that wants to stay anonymous and one that uses their real name and has all of their personal info out in the open.
The double standard is that "gamergate" is supposed to constantly denounce all these things that aren't coming from any of the main voices (or that can be pinned to any of the voices at all) yet you have prominent people in the implicated media companies recommending contacting people's employers to get them fired. Celebrating ruining careers and claiming to be a "megaphone" so don't cross them.
The double standard is people on one side have to constantly denounce death threats that they aren't making but nobody demands the implicated media companies do the same.
It is almost as if the side with the more powerful media presence is trying to keep the other side fighting an uphill battle of bad press...
Literally every time anyone says "I don't A, but B", they mean B but are just too cowardly to come right out and say it.
So why don't you go and take your concern elsewhere and fuck off, you misogyny apologist.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
And of course that would have to be " ... they mean A".
Fuck it. I'm out of this discussion, the stupidity is catching.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
You seem like a rational and easy to deal with person. Not inflammatory in the slightest.
But I'm glad you made this post so some people here at Slashdot can see exactly how "misogyny" is used to shut down people's brains and how it has been tacked on to "gamergate". Repeat a lie enough times and people seem to think there must be at least some truth to it.
I am a "misogyny apologist" (lol) for not siding 100% with journalists and hence lumped in with the "rampant" misogyny. The journalists did behave in unethical manners and there was a scandal (hence the -gate suffix). There is really no evidence of misogyny other than mean things said to a few individual women that seem to have a penchant for histrionic outbursts. Anything less than benevolent sexism appears to be misogyny to some people. Which is odd coming from a group that claims to be feminist.
Actually, everybody or nearly everybody involved here played dirty.
BTW, anybody who's not an SWJ should be ashamed of that fact (and won't get into Christian paradise as the Christ was crucified for being a SWJ)... but I'm not sure that living-room SWJ* are not worst than those who do not even pretend to care.
(*) How do you translate "guerillero de salon"?
According to Wikipedia, with a bunch of cites so I assume it's verified:
References are:
So it does appear to be demonstrably exposure for a game unrelated to the relationship between Grayson and Quinn.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.