[ SECRET POST #3819 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3819 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 40 secrets from Secret Submission Post #547.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: confessions

[thewakokid]

Ok, so Zoe Quinn made a mediocre game.

Zoe Quinn screwed some games journos, some of whom covered her game in a positive way. She also did a whole lode of other shit that pissed people off, but she's no worse than Phil Fish or Johnathon Blow. Shutting down Game jams and being a bit... well actually none of that really matters. Indie dev business is cutthroat, so its not nice business but it's not outrage worthy. The sleeping with journalists is headline.

Zoe's Ex-boyfriend reveals the sleeping with the Journos.

Some people go after her for being a "Slut" and do it in, you know, typical vile internet bully ways. Some people go looking into the Journos and start complaining about the corruption, because they can't be using their publications to praise someone who they are banging without declaring it.

The games journo industry, as a group, respond by ignoring the complaints and focus instead on the side of fandom going after quinn. "It's not about the shitty practices and corruption we do, it's all about hating women. This woman in particular, looks at whats being done to her, don't look at us."

The keep this momentum up, including on the same day, various outlets release several articles outlining how gamers are a dead identity, and game companies don't need to make games for gamers because basement dwelling misogynists, white male, disgusting, games industry is for the journos and the people who read their publications. this carries on for some time. I find this fairly unacceptable but the narrative seems fairly stuck on the "It's not about ethics it's about hating women". Sure it is for some, but the ethics are a big fucking concern for some of us.

it escalates. people are still attacking quinn and others, the gamergate tag has existed for a while, and the media are showing it as existing souly as a movement to attack women, so the tag is full of people who want journos to be more transparent and do less collusion - A mailing list of professional games journos is leaked along with chatlogs showing various outlets discussing what narritive they need to focus on - with each other to push narratives, and focus on actual reporting, as well as all the people who heard from the media that if you want to attack women, join gamergate.

back and forths occur. Bombthreats are made by both side, typical ideological warfare, unpleasent people on both sides dowrn out most of the valid points. People become relevent only in relation to their connection to anti or pro gamergate. They don't really want to see the conflict die down.

But it has to die down.

Eventually some victories are made on both sides, various publications agree that they'll start declaring any person relationships and any gifts and hospitality that is made by the people they cover, which is enough for many of us, other publications keep going on the "Gamers are scum" thing.

It dies down.

its over.

Re: confessions

[soldatsasha]

So it was actually confirmed that she slept with these game journalists before they covered her work?

Thanks for the write-up, dude. Sincerely. The whole thing was such a clusterfuck I think this is the first time I might actually understand any of it. Especially how the whole anti-gamer sentiment fit into it. I was never really sure which side that was coming from. I guess there was also a lot of push back against that sentiment as well, probably feeding into the radical divides in gaming communities today.

So, you're pro gamergate meaning you want more transparency in the industry?

Re: confessions

[thewakokid]

You're welcome. Yup, confirmed that she slept with them, but the defence given is that they didn't review her game, which is true, none of them reviewed the game or gave it a score, they just promoted it, wrote it into articles bigging it up, and promoted it as an important game making a push for it to win awards and what not. I choose y words carefully when I say they covered and promoted her game, because some people had been saying they were reviewing her game and that was generally the defence that was brought out "We never reviewed her game" which is somewhat disingenuous I feel.

It's possibly I'm being bias, and I know I've skipped over a lot of the minor battles that popped up, it was running on for about a year and some change, but broadly speaking the movement had scumbags and people with points to make, and since those points were about how journalists were doing their jobs in an unethical way, the natural response of an unethical journalist was to insist that the only reason anyone had of being pro-gamergate was because they hate women.

They just had to draw that line and watch while fairly strong personalities piled up on both sides to fight it out. People bought into in it a big way, the way anyone buys into an ideology.

I was pro gamer gate because I wanted the people helping me decide where to put a solid 90% of my disposable income to be more honest, less corrupt, and to stop calling my identity dead to hide their shitty practices. I don't think I am pro gamer gate because it has largely died down, and enough has changed in the industry that I don't think we need to push back against the journalists right now.

Edit: I did not actually read the anon below at the time I created this. Pure coincidence me bringing up the "We never reviewed her game" defence.

Re: confessions

[soldatsasha]

I saw the deetz at the time, and links to all the articles that the guys had been promoting her work in. I'd been under the impression that the whole "she influenced them with her |_33+ 53x 5ki11z0rz!!1" was the usual internet crazy bullshit and that she didn't actually know the guys, or knew them only professionally. I didn't know that she'd actually slept with them.

I mean, I think you're being a little biased. Gamergate did some really appalling shit afaik (the anti-GG crowd did too), and a lot of those people have continued with the ott sexist vitriol since then.

of course that doesn't mean that GG didn't have legit points. The gaming industry is hella corrupt and there's always being problems with bribes and dishonest reviews. It's definitely gotten better in recent years, but it's still a serious problem. And ia, I'm not a fan of attacks on the whole 'gamer identity.' Especially not from companies and individuals who rely on gamers for their entire business model to work.

Re: confessions

[thewakokid]

Oh, I'm not denying that some folks started off their outrage as an excuse to go after women in gaming, and I'm not denying that other people joined up to keep doing it, the death and rape threats, the doxxing, the bomb threats, there were some real scumbags on my side of things, and I take pride in having called out and spoken out against each and every one of those things. I just argue with the media narrative that this is the only thing people were complaining about. So if I seem like I'm pretending out side were the angels in this I'm sorry. I know what was going on. But when we got one side saying in almost one solid voice "This is what gamers are like, there's no need to worry about corruption, we're not corrupt, it's not about corruption it's only about harming women" that is one side I will take against.

Re: confessions

[soldatsasha]

I don't think you have to apologize, dude. Like I said, I think you're being a LITTLE biased, but it's understandable. Just saying you were pro GG is enough to piss a lot of people off, it's natural to be kind of defensive.

I was pissed off at the time about the anti-gamer bullshit. The GG fiasco was mostly contained to it's own little bubbles, but the anti-gamer crap spread fucking everywhere. Like, no, fuck you, I'm not going to be ashamed about being a consumer of the one entertainment industry on the planet where Being Gay is Actually Okay, and the one medium where there's such a thing as custom protagonists, and an industry that actually has a pretty decent percentage of high-ranking women writers and artists and directors and journalists and so on. Damn right I support the work of people like Amy Hennig and David Gaider and Michael Kirkbride.

... okay I guess I still am pissed off.

Re: confessions

[thewakokid]

I can't find anything to disagree with here. solid comment. anger seems reasonable - for me the episode of Law and Order still stings me to this day - and very few of us got out of the GG mess happier than when we went in.

I don't mean to apologise for my views, I got into the GG thing because I feel my views were valid and needed more people like me to express them - as opposed to leaving it to... shit I can't remember the guys name... fuck this is going to itch my brain... he was a scumbag, and every point he made was "Zoe Quinn this" and "Brianna Wu that" - Anyway, I feel OK about my own viewpoints, but I am sorry for coming across bias. That bugs me and is something I will have to work on.

Re: confessions

[soldatsasha]

You worry too much about how you come across, man. You're allowed to not express yourself 100% perfectly all the time, or to pick sides on issues. It's not like your opinion on something is invalid just because you aren't perfectly objective. :

Re: confessions

[thewakokid]

Oh, Christ, the Amy Hennig thing.

8(

Re: confessions

[soldatsasha]

Amy Hennig was the first game dev I ever knew anything about, bc of the special extra features with the Legacy of Kain games. Teen!me thought she was pretty much the coolest person on the planet, and I wanted to work for Crystal Dynamics just bc it seemed so awesome.

She's so amazing. (*˘︶˘*).｡.:*♡

Re: confessions

[(Anonymous)]

So, to be clear, the whole reason that you think Gamergate is justified is because you dislike journalists because:

1) they're corrupt
2) they're all high and mighty and snooty and annoying

Cuz it seems to me that, if this is the best example of corruption you're going to find, it's incredibly minor. Like... incredibly minor. It seems wildly disproportionate. And, like. Maybe there's other worse examples of corruption out there, but if so, why aren't people actually focusing on those?

And if it's the second one, that's just not a justification at all. It's a justification for not reading those websites, but it's not a justification for this massive scandal and criticism and fucking Dreyfus Affair bullshit. People who write about games having those attitudes is not a miscarriage of justice.

So.... like, if that's your account of what Gamergate was, it doesn't remotely answer the question of why you support Gamergate.

Re: confessions

[thewakokid]

Well, as gaming is pretty much the largest part of my life, I need the games media to do two things: 1. Honest and open reporting and 2. Defend the gamer identity from Jack Thompson-esque accusations like "Gamers are all School shooters in the making" or Anita Sarkeesian "Gaming makes you sexist".

When some journalists are under fire for corruption, I need the media to look into it, I need to know the media isn't all doing the same or worse, and when the reaction to gamers demanding transparency is for the entire journalist community to completely ignore the criticism from people like me and focus exclusively on the "Gamers are white male misogynists, don't listen to them!" yes, I think a consumer revolt in necessary.

Just out of curiosity, your phrasing of "it doesn't remotely answer the question of why you support Gamergate" could you clarify what you mean, or what you think I mean when I say I support gamergate?

Re: confessions

[(Anonymous)]

Consumer revolt. For Pete's sake. Consumer revolts don't usually take the form of harassment campaigns.

I think that the part of Gamergate - and I think this is in agreement with your post - was the gamer identity stuff, and more importantly, how that was defined, and what it meant in practice, and how many gamers' conception of that differed from the gaming press'. And I think that turned into basically an ideological campaign to police Gaming as a hobby and throw out anyone that wasn't part of those ideas. So when I hear that someone supports Gamergate, I generally assume that they support that ideological campaign and the things that people did to enforce it.

Re: confessions

[thewakokid]

No, but harrassement campaigns can be run alongside just about any movement. Look at whatever movement the "Day of Absence" thing was supposed to be about over at evergreen.

Look at the TERF actions in the Feminist movment.

Every group has their scumbags, ever banner has the bullies trying to hide under it. It's the job of the people in the movement to shout that shit down.

Re: confessions

[(Anonymous)]

Of course. But I also think it's just generally dumb to try to identity-police gaming as a hobby and force it to correspond to your idea of True Gamers Only, even if you weren't doing a harassment campaign about it.

Re: confessions

[thewakokid]

Oh, I agree, there too. The "White men only" crowd are the guys I was talking about when I say we had scumbags.

Identity policing has ZERO place in any aspect of gaming. Its certainly not something I allowed to go unchallenged in any of my discussions around gamergate at the time.

Re: confessions

[(Anonymous)]

Even the people who weren't actually being racist were still identity policing, though. They were trying to police who was allowed to be a gamer and what that meant. Even the ones that didn't define "gamer" as explicitly anti-feminist and pro-racism, it's still an effort to define who's allowed to be in the club, pursued with great venom and anger.

Re: confessions

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Which is why GamerGate was almost completely silent on the very real issue of AAA publishers strangling the editorial offices of computing publications, something that's been talked about for over 20 years now, and instead:

1. Slut-shamed Quinn for ONE relationship within a small circle of independent electronic games with tenuous connections to coverage of a free independent game.

2. Attacked journalists exploring the growing market of electronic games beyond a previously favored demographic of 18 - 35 white men.

3. Attacked journalists and game developers for engaging in the exact same forms of discussion about art that we have about everything from Shakespeare to last-week's television programs.

4. Attacked independent game developers for creating new games and exploring character representation within those game settings.

5. Attacked GAMERS, people who have been buying, playing, and talking about electronic games for decades who supported any of the above.

None of which was EVER remotely comparable to Jack Thompson, none. There's no comparison to be made there.

Re: confessions

[(Anonymous)]

I have no horse in this race but please don't pretend for even a second that there weren't some serious issues with harrassment campaigns from the antiGG camp as well, a fact that was and still is getting conveniently ignored in favour of painting the GG side as the evil devils and the anti GG side as pure little angels.
Both parties were shitheads, for the most part.

Re: confessions

[cbrachyrhynchos]

"Tu quoque" doesn't make GG legitimate.

Re: confessions

[thewakokid]

No, but look at it this way: Its a demonstration exactly what I was getting at: You have a movement with a goal: Good! Said movement gets taken over by thugs and bullies and people looking to send vile shit through the post to their enemies. If gamergate shouldn't be a thing because it had vile assholes, if gamergate no-longer has any valid points because there were scumbags doing scumbag things, then the people arguing against gamergate also no longer have any valid points, also need to shut up and stop pretending to have the moral authority to call out what they feel is shitty behaviour from another party, see?

Re: confessions

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that we should take that seriously, but it's completely impossible for that to be a justification for Gamergate

Like, it just is not a reason to support Gamergate. which is what we're talking about here!

Re: confessions

[thewakokid]

You know, I could point out that your - presumably first hand? - experiences of talking with people in gamergate is radically different to my first hand experience with talking to people in gamergate, but I'm not sure there's anything I could tell you that would change your mind.

I would point out, tho, that you are wrong about gamergate talking about AAA devs. We, by and large, have no love for them and their scummy mafia like tactics. I would say that outside of specific people who are indie devs I've heard more vitriol slung at the likes of EA and Ubisoft than the indie dev community as a whole. I would say it goes 1. People they hate, 2. AAA devs we hate, 3. Media outlets we hate, with 4. Indie companies we hate trailing by a large margin in the hate race.

I think a lot of those uses of the word "Attacked" might be more accurate to say criticised. Like I agree attacks were going on, but I honestly don't recall anyone doing No 3. Not saying it didn't happen, just my experience on No 3 is that the worst I saw was criticism.

As for the rest of it, my one defence is that me, and the people I hung out with were not party to, and openly spoke out against the people on either side doing any of those shitty thing. Here's the problem, here's the reason I think no matter what I say, you will be unlikely to concede any point here: This was happening all online. You try getting a group of people together online without shitheads seeping in. I've been told I deserve to be raped to death on this very community. The internet is islands of communities in a sea of shit. I don't deny that there are utter lowlifes under the umbrella of gamergate. Gamergate aboslutley had it's shitheads - By the way, replace gamergate with any community or group you belong to and tell me honestly if the statement becomes untrue - I argue that the balance of it is not what you believe it to be. I argue that there were more people within the movement shouting down the assholes than you believe, and there are several orders of magnitude more of us than the media was letting anyone know about. Anyone doing that shouting down found their way onto blockbots, after all.

Re: confessions

[cbrachyrhynchos]

You know, I could point out that your - presumably first hand? - experiences of talking with people in gamergate is radically different to my first hand experience with talking to people in gamergate, but I'm not sure there's anything I could tell you that would change your mind.

Gamergate advocates were quite explicit on these matters across multiple forms of social media.

I think a lot of those uses of the word "Attacked" might be more accurate to say criticised.

Criticism requires a deep reading and analysis of the works under scrutiny, which wasn't at all happening when the publishers "gaming is dead" articles were attacked on the basis of headlines, or approval ratings for indie game releases brigaded within hours of release. Similarly, "like Jack Thompson" isn't a criticism, it's a thought-terminating cliche.

Gamergate aboslutley had it's shitheads - By the way, replace gamergate with any community or group you belong to and tell me honestly if the statement becomes untrue - I argue that the balance of it is not what you believe it to be.

If you noticed, I largely didn't cite the excessively large number of shitheads who attached themselves to GamerGate. I cited the fact that GamerGate never produced a criticism of so-called "corruption" that wasn't completely fabricated or exaggerated beyond importance, and most of all directed at gaming advocates.

Re: confessions

[thewakokid]

Gamergate advocates were quite explicit on these matters across multiple forms of social media.

Explicit and contradictory. I could speak to three different "Advocates" and get 4 different conclusions. I'm guessing you spoke to them all in depth - feel I'm being somwhat generous here. My suspicion is, and I agree it may be unfair but it's my gut feeling on this, that you may have followed more links from news sources and people you already agreed with than you actually sought out people to talk to to get that all important deep reading and analysis, I don't mean to judge, it's just what I suspect - but you spoke to these advocates, heard all the different things they said, and concluded only the really bad ones were really advocating for change in the game journo industry. I mean, here I am, advocating for my reasons for being gamergate, and you seem to think I'm either blind or malicious. I mean, be honest, what is your true reading on me giving you my reasons and telling you about the things I care about. Do you think I'm lying? Do you think I'me stupid and have been taken in? I wont take offence, hit me with it.

Point I'm getting at is my experience is different than what you seem to think the whole movement is.

I disagree. I don't think you need to go to the far end of a fart to cricize somthing. "This upsets me, My identity is not dead, my identity is what keeps you in a job, so screw you" may not be deeply thought out, but I do still think it comes across more as criticism than an attack. here we may be getting into semantics, tho, so I'm happy to agree to differ on this one.

If you noticed, I largely didn't cite the excessively large number of shitheads who attached themselves to GamerGate. I cited the fact that GamerGate never produced a criticism of so-called "corruption" that wasn't completely fabricated or exaggerated beyond importance, and most of all directed at gaming advocates.

Well the vast majority of your numbered points were shitty things the shitheads in the movment were doing, and were also the entirity of the things anyone not in the movemnt cared to talk about. but I did already answer the "Gamergate never went afte the corrupt AAA devs" point you made. They were defiantly part of the talking points among my people. Ubisoft and their scumbag tricks were among one of the big causes of outrage for many of us. Not the most news worthy thing, because of two things, 1.They weren't part of or friends with the gaming media, so no-one cared to talk about that outrage (unless it was to call us piss babies for being fucked off by the ending of ME3) 2. Realistically what kinds of dent did or could our collective outrage ever do to put a dent into EA's pockets? Especially with no-one caring to report on it. Thats not to say I have any love for those guys.