Is there a way for you to quickly explain where/what the bias is, for people who have no idea what Gamergate is?
That's like... are you on Watergate's side?
Edit: I think I misunderstood the parent. To be on GG's 'side' in this sense would be to be a gamer who believes that games journalism should abide by some basic ethical standards and/or be a horrible mysoginist who hates the idea of female characters and catering to people besides straight white men, depending on who you ask.
I recall Stallman's remark that even if you're not interested in politics, politics is interested in you, but it looks more and more like there's nothing you can do to meaningfully and safely interact with the zeitgeist, so why the hell would you try to be part of any kind of politics. It feels more like a force of nature than an actual human activity. More like a tornado than a debate of any sort - just close your doors and windows, keep quiet and hope it's not your house that gets destroyed.
No, not really, but...
> That's like... are you on Watergate's side?
There were people on (the) Watergate (break-in)’s side. There are still, oddly enough, people proudly on that side (Roger Stone, for instance.)
Anyhow, since the Watergate scandal, naming things “-gate” to evoke Watergate and the widespread (though not universal) revulsion is common by opposing activists, but just because the name sticks doesn't mean the association does.
The fact that it was rooted in claims about a woman cheating on a man is no coincidence.
I appreciate that sites effort to remain neutral but I think at some point if a group's actions and behavior don't match their claims... then just reporting their stated motivation is actually inaccurate.
What is strange is that even for a while on their main gathering forums ... they denied even the source of the moment being the post about Zoe Quinn. It was a very fluid movement from the start, hate, us vs them, and other identity moments allow for that.
That /r/kotakuinaction organised harassment campaigns and that they faked harassment claims is a pretty harmful accusation, care to back it up with some evidence?
Gamergate is really a topic that folks who want to belive are going to belive, and no amount of linking is going to change anyone's mind. You literally had folks posting their tweets from their account(s) and then if things went bad that same user would claim that same twitter account was a fake account someone else made to make them look bad.
It's just one of those things that I found not to be worth getting into a googling / link fight about, just as a personal policy.
People can make of that what they will / not belive me, but it not worth linking to it as I find folks will belive what they're going to belive anyway.
That may not be the case here, but it's a better policy than taking things on faith in my opinion.
> Gamergate is really a topic that folks who want to belive are going to belive, and no amount of linking is going to change anyone's mind.
Another opinion I don't share. I would rather give people the opportunity to prove me wrong so that I can have the benefit of changing my mind and being right.
I hope you enjoy your beliefs.
I can understand someone who doesn't know not believing me, that's understandable and I respect that.
The only good thing is that companies has been less acceptable for such behavior. One developer from bioware got fired for it, and it likely contributed when an other developer at Anet got fired.
I think that behavior was terrible, but also not really generally the views of folks who might be associated with "anti-GG".
Having said that...
One of the catches is that there wasn't an organized "anti-GG" side in the same sense there was a "GG" core group. To some extent the "GG" folks were the ones who defined who the "anti-GG" people were, and they strongly believed that there was an "anti-GG" group that behaved in the exact same way they did, but I don't think that really added up. Sometimes they defined an "anti-gg" person as just someone who gave a poor review to a game they liked, a woman who had a visible role working for a gaming company, or just liked having a female protagonist, or something pretty disconnected.
Most people that GG folks associated with "aniti-GG", really was more of an amalgam of various people and personalities who had various views .... but weren't centralized on a "anti-GG" identity, they were usually people associated with other things that had nothing to do with "video game journalism ethics". There effectively wasn't really an equivalent ying to the yang as far as groups and opposing views went. Certainly people "against" GG, but usually they were tied to other things too.
What was "anti-GG" didn't even have anything to do with "video game journalism ethics" and to some extent GG found these folks views or what have you unacceptable and sort formed that concept. "Anti-GG" was often a case of who "GG" thought they were and at times simply sought them out. Like I said no doubt some folks associated themselves with "anti-GG" but it wasn't quite a ying and yang. Many of the people initially identified as "anti-GG" by "GG" folks often talked about being against online harassment, and really had no clue what GG was until things grew quickly.
I feel like this process of taking an issue, expanding into an identity and tacking on ideas, then seeking out those views and people deemed unacceptable, and in some way trying to pick a sort of social media fight, is a very common thing with identity politics type behavior, and GG certainly fit that pattern. What was or wasn't "anti-GG" largely was defined by that process.
Heres my evidence: http://www.deepfreeze.it/article.php?a=gjp
These are all substantiated facts that prove you wrong, I don't care that you are wrong for all I know you are a bot. But I wanted to show how to make an argument in good faith and substantiate your claims, it's up to you what you do with that.
Not that John bane did that, as can be heard in the linked source in the above article, where he even address the same thing you say in that there were not an organized anti-gg. He describe basically three loose groups, those that harass which he think should be frozen out of the conversation, those reacted to those and "fed the trolls", and the third small category of people who simply wanted to discuss game ethics.
To be fair the discussion of game ethics was drowned out, through I think the same thing he said said back then is still very relevant today. We still have game reviewers that get punished by publishers and put on "black lists" if they give a game a bad review, or worse get takedown notices. We also got PC game reviewer like ACG using the ethical dilemma as the premise why patreon supported game reviews are better than those that get "sponsored" by the industry, which he start and finish every single video with...
But to go back, yes. There wasn't an organized "anti-GG" side. If I had remembered that part of the discussion I would had avoided using the word and instead spelled out what I meant.
Both sides used this to try and play the bigger victim. This a bad argument as the counter is just to mirror it, playing up your own victim hood while down playing the others. No truth can be gained from this argument only a fight in bad faith.
As a side not however, I personally treat anonymous threats a bit different from statements which is done with peoples real name next to the logo of the game studio that they work at. In part because here in Sweden we have a reality show which premise is to locate people behind anonymous threats and shame them, while also provide free lawyers to those few victims that get to be on the show in order to file civil suits. The accused troll is always either regretful or deny the accusation.
In contrast the people who celebrate the death of John Bane do not regret the statement nor deny it. They think they are justified in their behavior. To me that is significant.
A woman cheating with a game journalist in exchange for positive coverage on her game.
GG 'supporters' will also point to collusion/cooperation (perceived or real) between many game journalists pushing a progressive agenda
Which was false: he never covered that game. https://kotaku.com/in-recent-days-ive-been-asked-several-tim...
"The accused took as harassment" implies that there was no harassing intent and... there's just no way that's true. People like Zoe Quinn were absolutely harassed, I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise. Even the original incident that sparked the whole controversy was bunk: that Zoe Quinn got a favorable review from a journalist because she was sleeping with him. He never even reviewed her game!
If Gamergate wanted to point out unethical practises in game journalism then holy hell was there a lot to work with. "Exclusive" reviews that are always positive, "sneak peeks" and so on that are openly and obviously traded for positive coverage. Video games journalism is so far deeply in bed with the major publishers in the industry it covers that it's absurd. But somehow, Gamergate became all about a small number of independent game developers who just happened to be women, and were (indisputably) the victims of harassment, rape threats and doxxing. Weird, that.
The harassment from the core GG folks was systematic and severe. In several cases it escalated to physical stalking of women where the police became involved.
And should we be surprised? This whole thing got started when one angry ex boyfriend wrote a rant and got the whole 4chan gaming world to start harassing and demonizing his ex.
But sure, go ahead and keep claiming "it's about ethics in gaming journalism" and that there's no harassment, just people being too sensitive or faking it.
Utterly. Preposterous.
But, this is a fallacy. Vaccines don't cause autism, the Earth isn't even a little flat, and GG wasn't in any way "about" ethics in games journalism — some people were led to believe it was, but they were useful idiots who were purposefully corralled to create a smokescreen. So I'd argue strongly against claims that the Wikipedia page is "biased" if it doesn't mention the ethics storyline. e.g.
notice the lack of cultural hell during "Gerstmanngate" — https://kotaku.com/yes-a-games-writer-was-fired-over-review-...
Or how the "sex for good reviews" accusation was about a game that never received a review from that publication
Or the chat logs that were found of the channers who worked the whole thing — https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/zoe-quinn-outs-4chan-behind-...
It's understandable, for parties with less information, to think this was more balanced than it was, but I hope with appropriate information we could stop giving that side credibility.
A great comic illustrating the dynamic http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/10/15/the-perfect-crime/
Well, actually, it is a little flat. In fact it's quite flat; it has curvature (inverse radius) less than 1.6e-7 (0.00000016) per meter. In other words, it takes about 70 miles for it deviate from 'flat' by one degree.
(Golden mean is a fallacy, but that's not a very good example of it's fallacity.)
To be fair, ArbCom did eventually decide they'd had enough and indefinitely ban him for this - much to the anger of all the folks proudly taking a stand against harassment by fighting GamerGate. (Though it took something like three attempts at bringing it before ArbCom.)
https://medium.com/@KingFrostFive/gamergate-august-2014-revi...
To be clear: This is not an endorsement. This is provided only because of the stark contrast with the wikipedia article depiction.
Wikipedia's goal (met or not) is accuracy, not equal time to every opinion.