Can we talk about 'Gamergate' ?

[prideslayer]

Thats definitely not the case in the UK, there was a time when the videogame magazine thing was quite a big deal.You could go into a newsagents like WHSmith's and they'd have a whole shelf groaning under the weight of them. So many folks would stand around reading but not buying that they started sealing them in polythene. Actually, there were more magazines dedicated to videogames than there were cinema, music or any other mainstream pursuit other than wanking.

 

 

I'm sure there is some selection bias on both our ends, but the numbers speak for themselves.

 

Subscription and readership numbers for these magazines have never been more than a tiny fraction of the number of game consoles (or PCs) sold. Unless the vast majority were either standing around reading them without buying (which I doubt. I'm sure you saw many -- but certainly not the majority), and/or every subscriber loaned every issue to 10 of their friends, they have never been more than a niche of a niche.

 

I don't think many folks do give professional reviewers the final word, most of us are just interested in hearing what others are saying about something. I don't think I've ever purchases a game on recommendation from a reviewer, but I have avoided a few that got panned by them over the years. They serve a purpose.

For you may they have a purpose, but for most people, they are irrelevant nobodies. When 2% or less of console owners subscribe to a game review magazine and less than 1% have watched some totalbiscuit video, 98-99% of people are getting their information from other sources.

 

Again, dismissing out of hand any potential "no true scotsman" move here.

[Guest]

For you may they have a purpose, but for most people, they are irrelevant nobodies. When 2% or less of console owners subscribe to a game review magazine and less than 1% have watched some totalbiscuit video, 98-99% of people are getting their information from other sources.

 

Again, dismissing out of hand any potential "no true scotsman" move here.

 

That may be true, but it's a pretty meaningless statistic. One could say that about any specialist readership magazine that's ever existed. 

 

It took me all of 50 seconds googling to discover that Game Informer is the 4th most circulated publication in America at 7.6 million a month,  it has double the readership of Sports Illustrated and Cosmo. 

[prideslayer]

 

For you may they have a purpose, but for most people, they are irrelevant nobodies. When 2% or less of console owners subscribe to a game review magazine and less than 1% have watched some totalbiscuit video, 98-99% of people are getting their information from other sources.

 

Again, dismissing out of hand any potential "no true scotsman" move here.

That may be true, but it's a pretty meaningless statistic. One could say that about any specialist readership magazine that's ever existed.

 

It's not meaningless. I asked if these magazines (and by extension, "gaming journalism") was ever really influential/important. It can't be significantly influential if the number of people it's influencing are the thinnest slice of the market.

 

It took me all of 50 seconds googling to discover that Game Informer is the 4th most circulated publication in America at 7.6 million a month,  it has double the readership of Sports Illustrated and Cosmo.

1. As already mentioned, everyone who signs up for the "discount card" at gamestop gets a subscription to that magazine. In their case, subscription counts are hardly a measure of readership. It's like suggesting there are 200 million coupon using households in america simply because val-pak ships out that many envelopes every week.

 

I myself have had a subscription, twice. I only opened one issue, once.

 

2. SI and Cosmo are fine examples. Would you like to argue that they significantly influence the sports or... whatever market cosmo serves.. markets? Do significantly more or less people buy tickets to sporting_event_x based on SI coverage of sporting_team_x's last outing?

[windpl]

 

 

 

 

One can be quite sure that most folks these days would have no idea who the likes of Major Mike or Sushi-X are

Count me among that group. No clue.

 

This tells me that they were even more "minor" of celebrities than you consider them to be, since I've been an avid gamer since the Atari 2600. I've owned almost every home game console since the telegames Pong console, as well as computer games on everything from the VIC-20 to present.

 

In all that time, over all those consoles and computers, I've never bought a "video game" magazine at a newsstand or bookstore, and only (intentionally) subscribed to one -- which was a blatant advertising rag. I don't believe I'm unique or even in a minority there. I'd bet money that most PC and console gamers now, and in the past, did not buy or subscribe to any of these magazines and don't regularly visit review sites or youtube channels today.

 

That leaves just falling back on the "real" gamer or "hardcore" gamer trope, which is weak on its face. A "hardcore gamer" is presumably the person least likely to need a game review to help them make up their mind.

 

Thats definitely not the case in the UK, there was a time when the videogame magazine thing was quite a big deal.You could go into a newsagents like WHSmith's and they'd have a whole shelf groaning under the weight of them. So many folks would stand around reading but not buying that they started sealing them in polythene. Actually, there were more magazines dedicated to videogames than there were cinema, music or any other mainstream pursuit other than wanking. 

 

 

I think that it is(was) case for whole Europe,  maybe we value games more than others. Duno.

 

[Alva]

Purely anecdotal and subjective

 

I read and reread a lot of the European gaming magazines back in the mid 90s - as they pretty much were currency when I did my conscription time amongst my peers, and what I recall from then was a more informative, descriptive, style of articles that spend less time trying to praise or hype the product as they did trying to inform the customer about the product.
I read these magazines intensely and used some of the articles as foundation for purchases of not only games, but hardware as well.

But the publishers also had to be careful because it was more difficult to get their games and messages out to the world because it had to be in these printed things.

 

These magazines were important at that time and they were quite a big deal. Heck living in Denmark I even had to wait a long time to get the current magazines from the UK or Germany and then wait longer for the games to arrive.

 

When the gaming magazines then really started going online in the late 90s that focus changed completely, because on the internet things moves faster and content is only worthwhile a short period of time due to the massive amount; hence there were more and more focus on clicks and click-through (banner adverts had to make up for the decline in magazine sales). And the shift became obvious to the sensationalistic headlines - and then the publishers and developers gained so much more power over the ability to spread information themselves and the paradigm shift was complete for this "gaming review industry":

 

The problem is that the consumers didn't follow this shift, so there were a serious lack of repercussions overall because as the magazines died out, the highest click websites won. But heck - we see that in normal media as well where news channels can spin the world upside down to fit their agenda and the hungry hungry hippos .... eehh consumers just swallow it up and move on to the next piece of consumption.

 

Things have changed, even just from my subjective, anecdotal evidence and the gaming magazines of the 90s were vastly different and vastly more influential for the gamer than these IGN, Gamespot or what is currently reviewing stuff on the net today, which are clear lapdogs for the producers rather than the consumers (which should be their customers).

[Guest corespore]

I hadn't even heard of any of those sites except the Escapist, and i only knew that one because of Yahtzee. I still couldn't have cared less for any of them despite the fact they seem hell bent on calling me a sexist because i play video-games. well..... I am a bit of a sexist and asshole but blaming games for my lack of humanity is just wrong. 

[mike20599]

GamerGate is as much about ethics in game journalism as it is fighting the Social Justice Warriors who want to shame you for enjoying boobs in video games. They wrecked the comics industry, the tabletop industry, and the Sci Fi fiction industry, and then they had their sights set on gaming, until GamerGate put a stop to their advance.

[Zor2k13]

I would guess that some of you have never been into a game stop store before? Go to any one of them and you won't want to go back again. That game informer rag is shoved in your face as soon as you walk in there and they try to force you to buy their card and marketing bs before you can even say a word lol. Gamestop owners publish game informer,they have a really bad rep and with good reason, that one company used to be several smaller companies that competed against each other and had a lot of cool stuff in their stores in the 90's. The problem with a lot of that stuff was that it got expensive and the economy got bad and stayed bad mostly since the 90's so there is no retailers paradise anymore. Most people don't buy their games there except maybe for some late night call of dookie launch or whatever. I think most people just buy stuff from wally world or other places.

 

Average person can't handle $4 a gallon for gas and a bunch of expenses then go drop a few hundred bucks on games and stuff every week. Most retailers are really suffering and will go out of business. When gas was $0.80 a gallon and there were less people in general back in the 90's it was great! for retail. They will never see those numbers again, gas got a little cheaper it is $3 a gallon now but that still doesn't help since other things are still bad. In order for people to spend money they have to make it first, since that is not possible anymore people have switched to paying a fee to spend someone else money instead of their own aka credit cards, there will be a bottom to that too and it will be ugly.

 

 

[Guest corespore]

Gaming outlets are dying because there's no point in spending 30 minutes in traffic so you can pay full price for a game when you can download the exact game legally for a fraction of the price digitally and not even have to put pants on. 

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

Gaming outlets are dying because there's no point in spending 30 minutes in traffic so you can pay full price for a game when you can download the exact game legally for a fraction of the price digitally and not even have to put pants on. 

 

Digital distribution's the way of the future. Helluva way to cut out the middle man. Gamestop's going to die someday because of it (and good riddance). The only thing that concerns me is games being linked to accounts. So if you account get's banned, for whatever reason, all your games and money spent are now null and void.

[Guest corespore]

 

Gaming outlets are dying because there's no point in spending 30 minutes in traffic so you can pay full price for a game when you can download the exact game legally for a fraction of the price digitally and not even have to put pants on. 

 

Digital distribution's the way of the future. Helluva way to cut out the middle man. Gamestop's going to die someday because of it (and good riddance). The only thing that concerns me is games being linked to accounts. So if you account get's banned, for whatever reason, all your games and money spent are now null and void.

 

I agree with you there. That's the real rub of digital, you have to assume when you hand your money over that they aren't going to bone you over at the drop of a hat..... which they will do eventually. Then again thanks to publishers cramming DRM on disks now every console and PC disk based game is at the same risk.

[Zor2k13]

Honestly I don't buy games I just download them, burn through them in a few hours like call of dookie and then delete them. Why pay? for the multiplayer? I don't want to spend four or five months listening to a bunch of trash talk coming out of a buggy mess, getting killed by lag, learning to lag shoot all over again for each game that comes out and so on. I really don't see the appeal of multiplayer in modern games. The last game I bothered with for multiplayer was cs1.6 a long time ago! BIG maps by todays bullshit standards and while people did cheat there was some servers where people were not cheating. This was before steam and all the DRM shit it brought with it. I hate steam it is just garbage that tracks everything you do with games that you buy from it. Don't think for a second your personal info is private either, they sell that data to the highest bidder DAILY so at some point later on, employers will have every metric available to them and if they don't want to hire people that play games, they don't have to! Whats his name? john doe, ok found him on our database it says steam has him as a customer with 300 games bought over the last five years ok trash that resume neeeeext!

 

A decade or less from now, employers will know wether or not they want to hire ANYONE that attempts to walk through the doors of their HR depts or sends in a resume. Many people will be INSTANTLY rejected and probably almost all of those rejects will only have a future at places like wally world and mcdumbasses.

 

It is completely and totally foolish to buy a priveledge to play a game instead of buying the whole game capable of running it offline. The future of gaming is something shitty like onlive or whatever it was called where you log into a server somewhere and play the game from that server through a web browser. The internet in many countries especially america is too shitty for that to work right. When countries like US get south korean and japan internet speeds you better believe the offline gaming experience will be history!

 

I own legit copies of games like oblivion and some space sim games that I don't play anymore but modern games are just shit, games like farcry 4 3 and 2 are a bunch of forced PSA garbage about the problems in africa, I want to play a game I don't give a shit about africa! too bad says nutty farcry devs! Remember the first farcry? just shooting and sneaking and driving stuff around on a nice sunny beach. The location was fictional and didn't matter then, why should it matter now?

 

There will never EVER be another game with big maps and interesting gameplay like cs1.6 everything now is tiny maps and shitty multiplayer. The only thing we really have to look forward to is MAYBE another mass effect game this time not written by douchebag crapshit (yeah makin fun of his name) that has a good offline story and some kind of persistent universe online that is not just shooting at other players. I will be suprised if star citizen actually works out after what happened with mech warrior online. World of warcraft has to fail at some point it will probably be after something really good comes out if ever.

 

 

We are really overdue for a major gaming industry crash anyway, get one of those and these so called gaming journalists will have to go back to working at wally world or get a real job writing for an online paper or financial outlet or something else that people actually read and remember.

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

I don't know how many know of it, but gog.com is a place where you can get games, full games, no drm. You buy it, that copy is yours forever. Sadly, it's mostly older games, but I have seen promo's for the Witcher 3 and a few others.

 

EDIT: This is not a testimonial or an advert, just wanted to point out that there are alternatives to steam

[TheOzoneHole]

Twitter and the bag salad will be the downfall of our species.

 

"Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."  Why can't we all just live by that? It would save everyone so much time and effort, not to mention the decrease in legal fees.

[redeyesandlonghair]

GamerGate is garbage - there might be some core group actually pursuing "integrity in gaming journalism", but by this point the title has been trashed to hell and back by all the actions taken in its name.  So are all these "female gamers" who make the claim that it's somehow hard to be a female gamer - bunch of attention seekers trying to have a pity party.

 

Neither of these groups represent anyone.  GamerGate doesn't represent any gamers, and these whiny female gamers don't represent women.  At some point the whole issue will just die out because that's how drama works... eventually it just burns itself out and then nobody cares anymore, and then we all get back to playing video games and calling each other cuss words over headsets.

[mike20599]

What country do you live in? In America, our media is controlled by extremists called Social Justice Warriors. If your game/movie/novel/comic doesn't have a homosexual in it, you are a bigot. If it has a sexy female in it, you are a misogynist. If you disagree with a woman on the Internet, you are harassing her. This is a full blown culture war now, and GamerGate is about fighting the SJWs as much as it is fighting for ethical games journalism.

[( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

I feel it's fair to point out a lot of the supposed SJW "supporters" have engaged in harassment, doxxing, and threats of their own. I think I remember seeing posts about them obtaining the phone number of a 10 y/o. The douchebaggery has not been exclusive to just the GG side of things.

[Guest corespore]

King of Pol was doxxed and he was sent syringes and knives in the mail along with letters encouraging him to kill himself and unlike the anti-GG side he reported it to the cops, so yes, the bullshit has been tossed both ways. 

[inei1888]

Anyone who is anti-GamerGate, consider this: the people who have been paying attention to this since day one, who are not game journalists or friends with game journalists are all pro-GamerGate...that's strange, isn't it?

[inei1888]

GamerGate is garbage - there might be some core group actually pursuing "integrity in gaming journalism", but by this point the title has been trashed to hell and back by all the actions taken in its name.  So are all these "female gamers" who make the claim that it's somehow hard to be a female gamer - bunch of attention seekers trying to have a pity party.

 

Neither of these groups represent anyone.  GamerGate doesn't represent any gamers, and these whiny female gamers don't represent women.  At some point the whole issue will just die out because that's how drama works... eventually it just burns itself out and then nobody cares anymore, and then we all get back to playing video games and calling each other cuss words over headsets.

Alright, so have you considered that the media that is being opposed for their corruption could be blowing the harassment and threats out of proportion just to soil the name of their opposition?  Is that at all possible?  Cause I really think it is. The doxxing comes from people like the Billy Waggoner crew, a troll that posts doxxes on both sides, some of the harassment has  been proven to have come from people who don't give a fuck about GamerGate, some of the death threats came from Mateus something from Celebrinando or something, some Brazilian tabloid, he hates GamerGate and its opposition, but GamerGate were the ones that tracked him down and Anita refused to do anything with the information when she was presented with clear proof that the guy was sending the threats.  The GNAA has admitted to sending threats, bragging about it on 8chan and saying when another threat was going to be sent.  GamerGate organized people to hunt down harassers, doxxers, and people sending death threats to get them reported.  And no, fuck no, it is not just a small minority of GamerGate that actually cares about corruption in games journalism, it is the overwhelming majority, but the media will write it so that it appears that the harassers are the majority because it takes the heat off them.

 

Aside from the corruption, this has become a culture war between the whiny cancerous form of feminism that has taken over the whole movement and the many rational thinking members of society who have seen the modern form of feminism for what it is.  Gradually more people are being awakened to it and are fighting back, but if you want this to end, so do I, but which side would you rather see achieve victory?  The side that wants to neuter male sexuality and police the thoughts of others or do you want those that want anyone to be free to make whatever game they want or whatever other form of media?  Do you want to be free to tell an off collar joke and not be branded a sexist or racist or do you want to walk on egg shells as society becomes more and more sensitive?  

 

I want equality, GamerGate wants equality, every rational human being wants equality, and we are in the majority, but what I and the majority of GamerGate doesn't want to see is this third wave feminist echo chamber controlling what we can and can't say, make or do.

[Yami X]

GamerGate is garbage - there might be some core group actually pursuing "integrity in gaming journalism", but by this point the title has been trashed to hell and back by all the actions taken in its name.  So are all these "female gamers" who make the claim that it's somehow hard to be a female gamer - bunch of attention seekers trying to have a pity party.

 

Neither of these groups represent anyone.  GamerGate doesn't represent any gamers, and these whiny female gamers don't represent women.  At some point the whole issue will just die out because that's how drama works... eventually it just burns itself out and then nobody cares anymore, and then we all get back to playing video games and calling each other cuss words over headsets.

 

 

[windpl]

Honestly

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest corespore]

^^ I freaking love socks. 

[mike20599]

I'm surprised there isn't more support for #GamerGate here, given that our opponents want to remove sexually attractive women from video games.

[Angrybird]

Because it doesn't matter? Because there is nothing more mundane? I feel my soul being sucked out even reading about it.