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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.
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 ?
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
This is just you growing up and realizing video games pre-order has no value and is just a way of getting money from suckers. This has always been true. A couple of times a year this happens and each time a whole new batch of gamers is rudely awoken to this fact.
Play Command HQ online
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.