Can we talk about 'Gamergate' ?

[Guest]

I don't think this specific subject has been covered much if at all here, though we have had a few discussions on themes that are related to what probably lies at the core of the whole #gamergate controversy. But I really can't think of a better place to explore it than here, and for reasons that are patently obvious to all of us. 

 

What prompted me to want to discuss it with you guys is this article by the English satirist,screenwriter and TV personality Charlie Brooker, who was  formerly a journalist for PC Zone, a UK magazine from the early 90s that broke some ground in specifically catering to the 20 something male demographic. Awareness of his background is significant because he really does know his audience. The heading and sub conveys his overall sentiment:

 

"Gamergate: the internet is the toughest game in town – if you’re playing as a woman. It’s a stealth adventure with nowhere to hide and hundreds of respawning enemies waiting to attack you the moment you stand out in any way"

 

What this broadly alludes to is events like the treatment of Anita Sarkeesian. But also he's talking about how women have to negotiate the pitfalls of gaming culture generally. 

 

I've been playing games since I was about 8 years old, and online games pretty much from that point, so I think I've probably experienced the entire gamut of what women can possibly come across in video gaming; a lot of awesome stuff,  a fair bit of  'meh', some 'ew!',  and very occasionally some downright sinister things that have caused me to be mildly concerned for my personal safety. So I think I've earned the right to stake a claim to some turf when it comes to knowing what it's like to be a female in a mostly male dominated video gaming world.

 

 I say it's changing, and has been for some time. And I think it has much more to do with gamers like me than it ever does Sarkeesian or Leigh Alexander at Gamasutra and their ilk. I and lots of female gamers like me actively participate, we compete, and once in a while we get to bust some myths. That's how you change things, not from an opposite podium.

 

I see Gamergate as nothing more than Newton's Third Law. They can make all sorts of lofty claims that they're taking a stand against general corruption and a lack of integrity in gaming journalism, but I see their existence as an equal and opposite reaction to the female bloggers at Kotaku and Gamasutra who are determined to keep stirring the pot. 

 

I'm pretty confident that Lovers Lab has a far more diverse crowd lurking here than these bloggers could possibly care to admit. I'd love to hear some views. 

 

 

 

[Jayce Dimmer]

I've found it fairly difficult to get any solid information on what this whole thing is about. Sources range from 'lass makes a review, lads flip their shit' to 'feminazi types nonsense, gamers unite through death threats'.

 

What I've been able to garner as a result of sifting through the ol' net, is that there's some woman whom made a couple of reviews. Folk being deplorable and the like, having found a target they can use to sate their aggression, have been making death and rape threats, as well creating feminazi strawmen.

 

Far as I'm concerned, we're just seeing humans displaying their fused chromosome; the two bases which fused to differentiate the homo sapien from the chimpanzee. Aggression and verbal degredation is standard fare; what is perhaps just as despicable as that, is how people defend the folk attacking the woman. It makes absolutely no sense.

 

 

But yeah. Humans being humans; belittling and threatening other humans. Fuckin' depressing.

[Guest]

Yeah that's about the size of it.

 

I don't want to stir any political pot here, I'm not particularly interested in what either of the two warring sides have to say about me and my fellow gamers, they're far to polarized in their perspectives. But I'm fairly confident that we folk at LL are quite a diverse bunch, our varied tastes are self evident in the sort of content we see generated here, even if the broad theme is sexual. A lot of us simply do not conform to the sorts of stereotypes these adversaries constantly churn out and their ardent supporters live up to.

 

 

 

[Kendo 2]

Anita Sarkeesian

https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A0LEVz_OgUZUEkkARHdXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByaHEyNGMxBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkA1VJQzFfMQ--?p=Anita+Sarkeesian&tnr=21&vid=D60305455CD7E1F7FBC7D60305455CD7E1F7FBC7&l=628&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DUN.607994600085981170%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DWuRSaLZidWI&sigr=11aubutmr&tt=b&tit=Anita+Sarkeesian-+BUSTED!&sigt=10pm87ept&back=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%3Fei%3DUTF-8%26p%3DAnita%2BSarkeesian%26fr%3Dyfp-t-315%26fp%3D1&sigb=12d0tc4cl

 

And take notice of Anna Akana's comment at 1:25 in the video about Anita, "She's had to hide her comments and turn off her like/dislike ratio."  Turn off the likes/dislikes?  I guess calling someone out for lying is a bad thing that needs to be hidden.

 

Another real gem is at 7:20 when Anita tells you how fucked up and stupid people are.  The circular psycho-babble 'reasoning' is mind-blowing.  By her logic, if I don't like English peas I really DO like them, I'm just too stupid to realize it.

 

I found out about Anita a few years ago when she bashed Fallout New Vegas and the Gomorrah casino; how it glorified the sex trade and abusing women.  I knew then she was full of shit.  Gomorrah is filled with ugly, drug addicted MEN AND WOMEN (like real prostitutes) and one of the key goals in the quests associated with the Gomorrah crime faction is killing the bad guys.  Anyway, Anita is a liar with an agenda.  And that's all there is to her.

 

[TheDriedFinger]

Have you watched some of InternetAristocrat's videos on the matter? I would recommend that anyone trying to figure out what's going on check out this video (you can skip to 1:31; just a funny intro). The trouble with getting good information on the subject is that Wikipedia has to go on what has been written about it. Now consider that the controversy that GamerGate deals with is collusion and corruption in games journalism and the people that will write/report on GamerGate are games journalists (conflict of interest? bias?). InternetAristocrat appears to be among the more prominent figures in GamerGate, at least on Youtube. He says that GamerGate is a reaction to the one-sided dialogue that appeared in much of major games journalism as third-wave feminism and "social justice warriors" crept into the video game industry. Essentially, there was a message that gamers were all white, mysogynistic males with neckbeards. And, so, GamerGate just wants to reveal the collusion behind all of this, revealing secret mailing lists where co-ordinated article releases were planned, and instances where journalists had personal and sometimes financial relationships with the people they wrote about, for example.

[LordJerle]

There's just as many sweaty topless men with overly defined physique running around in games as there are scantily clad women.  I believe this to be an attempt to create controversy where the attention is not needed.  There's more pressing issues for women than "oh my god, she's in a chainmail bikini!  *next game* Oh wow... he's so hot with his shirt off..." to be addressed, such as the very real pay gap, social expectations, and treatment in the work environment.  For example, a friend of mine recently got terminated because she turned a zone manager in for sexual harassment, who then turned around and started dating an assistant manager who then pulled some strings to get my friend fired.  As far as I know, nothing has happened to the assistant manager, as of yet.  The list goes on and on.  Treatment of women in video games, as far as I'm concerned, is bottom of the barrel, and is a very non issue.  The focus should be more on the conduct towards women by male gamers in online interactions, if anything.  I know women who were banned from servers because they were kicking everybody's ass and then spoke on mic and the server op banned them for being female.  

[ToxicKetchup]

I've found it fairly difficult to get any solid information on what this whole thing is about. Sources range from 'lass makes a review, lads flip their shit' to 'feminazi types nonsense, gamers unite through death threats'.

 

What I've been able to garner as a result of sifting through the ol' net, is that there's some woman whom made a couple of reviews. Folk being deplorable and the like, having found a target they can use to sate their aggression, have been making death and rape threats, as well creating feminazi strawmen.

 

Far as I'm concerned, we're just seeing humans displaying their fused chromosome; the two bases which fused to differentiate the homo sapien from the chimpanzee. Aggression and verbal degredation is standard fare; what is perhaps just as despicable as that, is how people defend the folk attacking the woman. It makes absolutely no sense.

 

 

But yeah. Humans being humans; belittling and threatening other humans. Fuckin' depressing.

 

That's not it at all. Not even close. Who's this person who made reviews? What are you on about? I never heard anything about that.

 

It's been about ethics and transparency in games journalism from day one. There's so much misinformation being thrown out there, I can understand how people would get some bad info, but for god's sake, do your research. There's a whole mess of good information out there, and it's not hard to find.

 

I'm very active in GamerGate. I was initially against it because I received bad info but after learning what it was actually about, doing the proper research and actually looking into things, I'm very pro-GG.

 

Just to be clear these people making threats don't speak for us. Like any group there will always be a rogue minority.

 

Actually I think SomethingAwful took credit for those death threats but don't quote me on that.

 

[ToxicKetchup]

Have you watched some of InternetAristocrat's videos on the matter? I would recommend that anyone trying to figure out what's going on check out this video (you can skip to 1:31; just a funny intro). The trouble with getting good information on the subject is that Wikipedia has to go on what has been written about it. Now consider that the controversy that GamerGate deals with is collusion and corruption in games journalism and the people that will write/report on GamerGate are games journalists (conflict of interest? bias?). InternetAristocrat appears to be among the more prominent figures in GamerGate, at least on Youtube. He says that GamerGate is a reaction to the one-sided dialogue that appeared in much of major games journalism as third-wave feminism and "social justice warriors" crept into the video game industry. Essentially, there was a message that gamers were all white, mysogynistic males with neckbeards. And, so, GamerGate just wants to reveal the collusion behind all of this, revealing secret mailing lists where co-ordinated article releases were planned, and instances where journalists had personal and sometimes financial relationships with the people they wrote about, for example.

 

Yeah, this, more or less. I'm not a very articulate person but that about sums it up.

 

 

I say it's changing, and has been for some time. And I think it has much more to do with gamers like me than it ever does Sarkeesian or Leigh Alexander at Gamasutra and their ilk. I and lots of female gamers like me actively participate, we compete, and once in a while we get to bust some myths. That's how you change things, not from an opposite podium.

 

I see Gamergate as nothing more than Newton's Third Law. They can make all sorts of lofty claims that they're taking a stand against general corruption and a lack of integrity in gaming journalism, but I see their existence as an equal and opposite reaction to the female bloggers at Kotaku and Gamasutra who are determined to keep stirring the pot. 

 

I'm pretty confident that Lovers Lab has a far more diverse crowd lurking here than these bloggers could possibly care to admit. I'd love to hear some views. 

 

I'd disagree with you there. GamerGate raised over $70,000 for a charity venture to get more women involved in game development. The people in GG are primarily left-leaning libertarians who do genuinely want to see more women in the gaming industry. What they don't want to see, however, is all this collusion, nepotism, cliqism. You're letting them pull the wool over your eyes and not seeing the bigger picture.

 

I'm a female gamer involved in GamerGate and I sure feel a hell of a lot safer with them. They won't try and speak for me, they let me speak for myself. They don't try and use me like a shield to deflect criticism either. Not one pro-GG person has threatened me or made me feel uncomfortable, but I've received plenty of threats, bullying and intimidation from people who supposedly claim to have my best interests at heart.

 

 

 

 

Sorry for the double-post.

[ChancellorKremlin]

As with most forms of extremism, my take on it is thus - "Quick! Journalistic integrity is at risk - to the death/rape threats!" - you have your priorities mixed up.

[pinky6225]

There's just as many sweaty topless men with overly defined physique running around in games as there are scantily clad women.  I believe this to be an attempt to create controversy where the attention is not needed.  There's more pressing issues for women than "oh my god, she's in a chainmail bikini!  *next game* Oh wow... he's so hot with his shirt off..." to be addressed, such as the very real pay gap, social expectations, and treatment in the work environment.  For example, a friend of mine recently got terminated because she turned a zone manager in for sexual harassment, who then turned around and started dating an assistant manager who then pulled some strings to get my friend fired.  As far as I know, nothing has happened to the assistant manager, as of yet.  The list goes on and on.  Treatment of women in video games, as far as I'm concerned, is bottom of the barrel, and is a very non issue.  The focus should be more on the conduct towards women by male gamers in online interactions, if anything.  I know women who were banned from servers because they were kicking everybody's ass and then spoke on mic and the server op banned them for being female.  

 

I don't work in game development, i do however work in IT and while the ratio of men to women still favours the men the women that i work with get the same pay, same perks, same commitments and the same deadlines

 

They are literally treated the same

 

So maybe in the world of IT supporting warehousing solutions great advances have been made but i would doubt it

 

 

I originally got into gaming a bit before the days of the internet and when the internet came about it was all text based since with a 56k modem downloading a picture or a video took forever (if you needed a 5 MB patch you would either leave the PC on overnight or go out) and yes i'm sure their were lots of guys pretending to be chicks and lots of chicks pretending to be guys as it made no difference as you were only going to communicate via text.

 

The internet has moved on and now pictures and video are downloadable in seconds and we have voice chat and video chat and so on but at the end of the day whether your a him or a her or even a it we are never going to physically meet so why does your sex matter? Why is it even brought up?

 

Perhaps rather than thinking that someone is ranting at you due to your sex you should accept that they are ranting at you because they are a prick or a sore loser and regardless of what sex you are they would still be ranting at you because they are a prick or a sore loser

 

Then again maybe everybody in the world just sees stuff differently to me.

[ToxicKetchup]

As with most forms of extremism, my take on it is thus - "Quick! Journalistic integrity is at risk - to the death/rape threats!" - you have your priorities mixed up.

 

As I've said time and time again, those people making threats don't speak for us. We abhore and condemn that kind of behavior.

[Jayce Dimmer]

 

As with most forms of extremism, my take on it is thus - "Quick! Journalistic integrity is at risk - to the death/rape threats!" - you have your priorities mixed up.

 

As I've said time and time again, those people making threats don't speak for us. We abhore and condemn that kind of behavior.

 

 

And how have you been showing that? I've yet to hear of a counter movement to that which made the threats.

[Angrybird]

Video games used to be so cool.

[Kendo 2]

 

 

As with most forms of extremism, my take on it is thus - "Quick! Journalistic integrity is at risk - to the death/rape threats!" - you have your priorities mixed up.

 

As I've said time and time again, those people making threats don't speak for us. We abhore and condemn that kind of behavior.

 

And how have you been showing that? I've yet to hear of a counter movement to that which made the threats.

Trying to figure out why ToxicKetchup needs to 'show' anything to demonstrate her standpoint or what she believes to be true.  I don't think this is a topic for debate or confrontation. 

 

As to a 'counter movement' to the one that made alleged threats against Anita, her social media following IS that movement.  Literally thousands of people support her and her manufactured cause.  For every rabid dishonest SJW on the web there is going to be a misinformed and misguided forum dork posting things to defend the only source of pussy he can get.  (That's a game, btw.)

 

The whole situation is pathetic.  On one hand we have Anita and her ilk intentionally misrepresenting the obvious facts about game play content for the purpose of foisting the petard of what THEY consider to be 'feminism'.  On the other we have an equally lame response from game geeks whose idea of a 'girl friend' is a hot CG chica they can wank to.

 

I guess what irks me the most about Anita and her fans is basically anyone who questions them or their opinions is a misogynists.  To their way of thinking, if I question their 'facts' or outright accuse them of lying then I hate women.  I guess if they were African American then I'd be a racists.  If they were gay/lesbian then I'd be homophobic.  If they were Jewish I'd be antisemitic, etc.  The only thing that does is cheapen their argument and make reasonable people shake their heads.  There is no reasoning with people who have an agenda and if someone has to LIE to make a point, they never had a valid point to begin with.

[backthere]

I'm considering becoming a "closet hetero-normative" and retreating to my bunker of sex toys and debauchery til the world finds something more important to worry about....like making sure no one ever dies of hunger anywhere, ever, again.

 

The priorities of western society are more fucked up than the things they crusade against.

[Korbin]

I've been following the GG discussion pretty much since day 1; I think it's a fascinating event. What initially started as a gamer outrage has grown into a wide discussion on various topics such as misoginy, corruption, bullying, boycotting, etc.

 

I'm pro-GG myself. This means I want to get to the bottom of the stench that has been coming from the gamepress for several years. This does not mean I hate women or feel the need to send them death threats. Why would I spend my time making mods for my female character in Skyrim if I hate women? The LL forums are a perfect example of gamers loving all walks of life; some a bit more quaint than others, but everyone is allowed his place here. As far as I can tell there are plenty of women on LL who enjoy and contribute to a wide variation of content. If you are to believe anti-GG, these gamers are 'white misogynist cis-men'

 

Over the last week the smear campaign saying that #GamerGate as a whole hates women is laughable. I won't deny that there probably are some people inside #GamerGate that harbor some kind hatred towards women. I won't deny that there have been threats (legit or not) from the #GG side. However, you can't deny that there aren't people in the anti-GG side who display the exact same behaviour. Thing is, two wrongs don't make a right. We should acknowledge these factors and move forward focusing on the issues being raised. Sadly, the anti-GG side doesn't seem to want to have a discussion and just continues its ad hominem attacks ad nauseum.

 

The issue of the terrible journalistic integrity has effectively been pushed to the background, because GG is forced to defend itself 24/7 to the mainstream media at the moment. How convenient. I've been experiencing this completele lack of proper journalism myself in my own country. These last few days I've been trying to get in contact with various news outlets, but the response is always the same. My sources aren't credible, because look CNN, MSNBC, NYT, etc wrote this. The limited mainstream attention #GG has had in my country has been nothing but a copy/paste of those stories. Seems like journalism has stagnated into translating other people's work; work that hasn't been fact-checked in the first place. A vicious circle really...

[Symon]

Ah, let talk about women in IT and gaming!

 

First IT.

The very best programmer I ever met was a woman. She'd started in the 60's. She could toggle in the boot code for a PDP11 from memory, when drunk! She was brilliant. Made the average Microsoft employee look clueless (of course, Bill hadn't irritated his peers with his lackluster interpreter back then - the only code he is known to have personally written by the way). She had an interesting tale to tell. Back in the 60's and 70's, programming had a LOT of women involved. Why? Because it was seen as 'almost clerical' because it involved typing and a keyboard. Not a fit profession for an ambitious man.

 

During this time, most of the important IT advances were made. Compilers, the Arpanet, and later, tcp/ip and many more. Co-incidence? Who can say.

 

Then in the early 80's, IT began to be seen as 'a profession'. Idiot guys who'd have become accountants previously, invaded with their red ties and woman were just not appointed as much! What have we seen since? The rise of spam, bloated code, functionality churn, computer languages that don't seem to have been designed with a purpose in mind (Java anyone?) and 'Intellectual property' (I patent the wheel! What do you mean prior art? Uh? Swipe to unlock then!). I could go on. Coincidence? Everyone will draw their own conclusions.

 

I can assure you, a woman who has a technical role in IT these days will have to be at least twice as good as her male peers just to be regarded as adequate. I've met a lot of women in IT and as a rule of thumb, they are very competent, very conscientious but not load-mouthed enough to 'make an impact' like a less capable male peer.

 

The first computer programmer was a woman. Ada Lovelace (Byron) had arguably a greater impact than Babbage. Had she been a man, Babbage might well be a footnote.

 

As for gaming, well all I'll say is that the average female gamer is not as load mouthed and attention seeking as her male peers. It's interesting to note that many of the very best Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout3 modders are female and amusing to see how often male gamers 'just assume' they must be male. It's also interesting just how many give up correcting people on their gender. Is this because they don't want to poke their heads above the parapet to get them kicked? Again, you will all have your own opinions.

 

I read the Guardian article by the way (read it every day). Found it a bit dull and mostly said things that I thought pretty self-evident. Maybe I'm just a cynic?

[Guest]

 

 

 

 You're letting them pull the wool over your eyes and not seeing the bigger picture.

 

 

 

Well maybe...but I'm intrigued by who 'they' are - anybody who happens to be critical?  

 

What about this Mike Cernovich guy, is he really the sort of person GG want people connecting them with? Apparently so. From what I've read of him he's certainly not somebody you want to tangle with, he'll troll the hell out of you and then threaten you with litigation when you react. 

 

I think that's my big problem with movements like GG, they have no discernible organisational structure so they can't be held accountable for anything reprehensible that happens in their name, like dragging Anil Dash's name through the mud for no obvious reason other than he happened to be in the firing line during one of GG's co-ordinated Twitter campaigns against Gawker journos. 

[Guest]

.  Treatment of women in video games, as far as I'm concerned, is bottom of the barrel, and is a very non issue.  The focus should be more on the conduct towards women by male gamers in online interactions, if anything.  I know women who were banned from servers because they were kicking everybody's ass and then spoke on mic and the server op banned them for being female.  

This is something I've experienced a lot. I think I was a pretty good raid healer, back in the days of 40 mans that went on for frigging hours, you had little time to do much more than watch for line of sight issues and juggle dozens of health bars until your eyeballs dried up.

 

I very quickly learned not speak on Ventrilo if there was anyone in the raid group I wasn't familiar with, if I did the raid leader would inevitably get some guy asking why I always got a place when I didn't seem all that good a healer. Basically, if people knew I was a girl I'd then be expected to work twice as hard to justify my spot, or the inference would be that I was sucking off the raid leader. 

[afa]

Oh no has this finally rear its head in LL?

When the mass cleansing of the ZQ incident happens I was starting to wonder if LL will have a thread on it.

[Duoleb The Chosen]

look Calyps and Nuska

 

and what happened

[Korbin]

I think that's my big problem with movements like GG, they have no discernible organisational structure so they can't be held accountable for anything reprehensible that happens in their name, like dragging Anil Dash's name through the mud for no obvious reason other than he happened to be in the firing line during one of GG's co-ordinated Twitter campaigns against Gawker journos. 

 

 

GG isn't a company, an organisation, a political party or anything. At best it can be described as a movement. It's a conglomerate of people with a similar goal in mind. The fact that it doesn't have a leader or a group of people assuming command is its greatest strenght. Leader figures or organisations can be smeared, black mailed or co-opted. It only opens you up to more ad hominem attacks which this ordeal has had plenty of - on both sides. Furthermore, #GG isn't looking to replace the current powers that be. It has been very clear that it just wants more transparency and integrity; people can stay exactly where they are (mostly), but they must revise their journalism and work ethics.

 

Before #GG was GG it was a small issue that could've been easily resolved. After the coordinated article wave of the 'Gamers are dead' it became very clear it was going to be an us-vs-them fight - resembling a war. As for people getting caught in the crossfire I'll be very blunt; casualties of war. As I mentioned in my previous post, these casualties have been on both sides of the argument. It's something that shouldn't happen, but it always does in conflicts. Both sides should acknowledge these faults - and they do to a certain extend. I've seen pro-GG being very strict amongst itself and calling people out when they're being retarded. Naturally there will always be trolls or idiots who just want to see the world burn. This is the Internet after all. I'm sure anti-GG follows the same ideas in self-policing. Thing is, this argument is just secondary or tertiary to what, at least pro-GG, see as the main issue. All this emphasis on misoginy, women in gaming, bullying, death threats and harassment, while problematic, all serve as a giant smoke screen for the initial issue of corruption in (games)journalism. I'm just extremely frustrated that the goalposts get shifted everytime pro-GG tries to bring this up.

 

What is most frustrating to me is that there is hardly any debat among the more prolific people of both sides. Why don't Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu, etc. go into a direct debat with Dr. Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, Internet Aristocrat, Sargon, etc. I know there are plenty of streams and radio shows that are completely willing (and have shown so in the past) to host a platform for this discussion, but it seems the anti-GG side doesn't want to. The only time Quinn got close to debating a pro-GGer the comparison was made, if people should be talking to ISIS (again comparing GG to ISIS). Thing is, people actually do that...

[windpl]

I don't see need for debate where on side is full of awful liars and shit.

Liars are exposed, full of shit people are retreating and "gaming press" has realised that smearing your customers is a bad business practice.

[Kendo 2]

I don't see need for debate where on side is full of awful liars and shit.

Liars are exposed, full of shit people are retreating and "gaming press" has realised that smearing your customers is a bad business practice.

I agree 100%.  We have two packs of internet neurotics blubbering and blowing snot at each other like elephant seals on a South American beach somewhere.  Does any of this shit these people are yammering about REALLY matter to anyone who doesn't have an unreasonable fixation on a fucking on-line 'cause'?

 

I mean, seriously...    These people know what they're doing is fucked up and they're doing it anyway.  Who wants to be involved with that other than other webz warriors who want to worry about shit NOT WORTH worrying about?

[afa]

well yes, but that also means if there's any issue that some would want to coverup or get people to stop talking about it, all that needs to be done is to cloud both side of the discussion with senseless bs and people will eventually ignore it altogether.

Sounds a bit too...convenient