fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3819 ]

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There is a leap there that I am just not seeing? Like I don't see how someone like me was identity policing. What are we talking about here?

(for clarity sake: this is also a little in response to your reply to cbary's post in one of the other subthreads)

So, the way that you've framed this struggle here is around the identity of "gamer" as an identity, right? Like you said in the other reply, that's the identity that you feel that you need to defend. And that matches with my own perception of what the whole Gamergate thing was mostly about, and why most people who were involved in it cared about. So on that level, it seems like it makes sense.

But once you start talking about a gamer identity, you have to ask yourself: what does that gamer identity consist of? And I think that's part of what cbary was pointing out - that gamer is a complicated concept, and that there are all sorts of invisible ways in which we define that identity. Being a gamer does not just mean that you play games - it means that you care about games in a certain way, that you care about certain games specifically, etc. And often, at least from the outside, those definitions seem to line up with a bunch of demographic markers. Like, the kind of games that gamers care about tend to be the games that are most directly marketed towards particular age groups and towards men and all the rest of that stuff. And there's nothing wrong with that, in itself. But it is more of a problem when you turn it into the idea that gaming as a hobby has to be about that, and gaming press has to be responsive to that, and focusing on things outside of that is bad. I think that's what cbary is pointing to.

And then, what I was trying to say when it comes to identity policing - I think a lot of what Gamergate was about was about who was allowed to count as a gamer and who was allowed to be about gaming as a hobby. So a lot of that is defining the people and the attitudes that are outside gaming, and then trying to force them out of gaming, and trying to force the gaming media not to take on approaches to gaming outside of that identity. And that is identity policing. Even if it's not a racial or ideological identity, it's still identity policing.

Even if you completely ignore all of the gender stuff, and the scumbags, it's still at the base of it an attempt to say who is allowed in the gaming club and who isn't. About people who are gamers, according to your understanding of what a gamer is, and people who aren't.

I hope that makes some degree of sense.

Riiiight. ok. With you now, and I agree up to a point. That point being:

that gamer is a complicated concept, and that there are all sorts of invisible ways in which we define that identity. Being a gamer does not just mean that you play games - it means that you care about games in a certain way, that you care about certain games specifically, etc

Yes agreed.

those definitions seem to line up with a bunch of demographic markers. Like, the kind of games that gamers care about tend to be the games that are most directly marketed towards particular age groups and towards men and all the rest of that stuff.

Disagree on that one.

Perfect example, this last weekend, I spent about an hour talking to a complete stranger, a slightly younger woman of colour, about a game we both love FFXI which was written and market towards younger gamers with a fairly romance heavy series of sub plots. That lines up with none of my demographic markers. She lines up with almost none of my deomgraphic markers except she was dressed as a character from the game.

Or I can spent 20 seconds talking to a guy my age, my sex, my orientation about halo, where I bring up the deep story and lore, and all he talks about is his top kills or some shite, and realise I have nothing in common with him. Or not halo, I can actually give an example that has happened with a guy from work my exact age, all the same markers, and i want to talk about overwatch lore, but he can't even name a character.

Part of the reason I love the gaming community is because demographic markers, mean precisely dick all.

So I see what your saying, but honestly outside of the one thing we have in common, the choice to be a gamer, I don't see that identity has ever had a bearing on my experience in the community.

I understand if you don't want to talk about this anymore, but I just want to make sure it's clear that the other part of my post doesn't depend on the first one. I do think there is a bit of underlying social structuring there, but maybe not as much as it might seem from the outside. But I also think it's still identity policing either way. And I think it's really easy for that kind of identity policing to turn into something malign.

Re: confessions

thewakokid - 2017-06-19 23:36 (UTC) - Expand

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.

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.

"Tu quoque" doesn't make GG legitimate.

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?

if gamergate no-longer has any valid points because there were scumbags doing scumbag things,

Which isn't the argument at all. GamerGate didn't have many valid points to start with, and the few issues of ethics it did address were broadly misapplied to game players, game producers, and game advocates who produced content that GG didn't like.

If anything, the scumbags have proven to be useful idiots for GG advocates to throw under the bus, rather than deal with problem that the GG agenda was largely bullshit to start with.

GamerGate didn't have many valid points to start with

And this is why we won't be seeing eye to eye on this. I completely disagree.

Let's see here:

Even if she was screwing people for positive professional attention,

Didn't actually happen. And as you admit, wasn't her responsibility. Curiously the journalist in question is nameless in this discussion.

Zoe Quinn screwed some games journos, some of whom covered her game in a positive way.

From one to plural? From what I can tell, the coverage was "hey this is interesting because of the subject matter and it exists" which is what everyone else was saying independently about her project because games dealing seriously with mental illness were, in fact, a new an interesting thing. The course I produced on game design last year covered a half-dozen of them created after Quinn's game.

The games journo industry, as a group, respond by ignoring the complaints and focus instead on the side of fandom going after quinn.

Perhaps because Quinn was, in fact, getting hundreds of harassment messages including death threats on a scale that had previously been unprecedented in the history of twitter? So much that people started writing new software to deal with mass harassment mobs? Maybe because Quinn, who did nothing wrong other than having two boyfriends within the small circle surrounding independent games development, became the figurehead for "corruption in games journalism?" Perhaps because other female developers in the field were targeted for online harassment after Quinn?

Meanwhile, those publishers began more openly disclosing many of their relationships, documenting their participation in publicity events, and explaining the process of how they got review copies?

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.

Which isn't remotely what the articles in question on Ars Technica and Gammasutra (which is a site that regularly runs features by game developers themselves) actually said. The thesis of those articles was that the market for games includes women and older adults, is international, and is multi-platform with increasing revenue coming from mobile gaming.

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.

Oh no. A profession has a mailing list! The horror! The corruption! Since the rest is presented without any additional support, it can be rejected without comment.

You're really hitting it in on "valid points" here.

"Even if she was screwing people"

"Zoe Quinn screwed some games journos"

From one to plural

No? From Plural to plural.

And btw, wan't it confirmed? didn't Nate Grayson admit it? So did one of the other ones, I think, but I cant remember exactly what the deets where there. but like I said, this was the spark. He bigged her up, she was, at very least a friend of his, he contributed to her patreon. He did also admit to dating her. These are all things he had a responsibility to declare. Even if you think these are minor, the fact that when called on it, and entire industry closed ranks, hinting at wide spread collusion and complimentary back scratching...

Which, you wont see as a problem. Its a none issue to you. Argh, why am I still trying to justify this to you?

Fuck, it's half 12. I'm out.

Re: confessions

cbrachyrhynchos - 2017-06-19 23:47 (UTC) - Expand

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!

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.

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.

Edited 2017-06-19 21:06 (UTC)

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.

No, but I've read those advocates at length on their own blogs, and in comment sections of neutral articles where those advocates objected at length because the hosting site was biased for some other article deep in the archive talked about the role of women in a completely different game. So if gamergate advocates are misrepresenting themselves on their own blogs, in their own written manifestos, and in their own comments, who should we trust on what they really mean?

Do you think I'm lying? Do you think I'me stupid and have been taken in?

No, I think you're engaged in bullshit and have been taken in by bullshit. The distinction there is that liars know they're lying but bullshit says whatever it thinks is most convincing.

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 read the articles, you would know that your identity as a market segment is not what keeps game developers employed anymore. The games industry now covers people of all genders from 5 - 85. North America is no longer the biggest market. Mobile worldwide is generating as much revenue as desktop and console gaming, and in a few years, the top mobile games beat out the best MMO and MOBA in revenue. And then, we have Generation Z coming of age in another few years. I'm a gamer, you're a gamer, my 90-year-old cousin is a gamer, and my pre-teen nieces and nephews are gamers now.

All of this is a good thing for games. After all, a healthy Hollywood produces both "chick flicks" and superhero stories. What's dead isn't the hobby or the medium. What's dead is the assumption that games are limited to the same marketing demographic as $5 razor blades. (All of which, was explicitly stated once you got past the clickbait headline.)

And "grow a quad," Wako. A hobby isn't worth shit without at least one article in circulation declaring it "dead" as clickbait. Just in my circle, punk is dead, religion is dead, lisp is dead, comic books are dead, and best of all irony is dead.

I'm getting kinda tired of this, so I'll start winding it down now, if it's all the same to you.

I don't think you're ever going to see that people on my side had valid points that made our involvment feel necessary, or that we were not the borg that could be represented by a monolith of GAMERGATE, or that we were all saying the same thing and believed the same thing. I don't think you'll ever believe that people like me were in it for different reasons that is commonly believed. You think I am being, what, accidentally disingenuous? I'm really struggeling with the idea that you can be a bullshitter without being a liar. I don't think I need to, I promised I wouldn't get offended, and I swear I haven't, but it does leave me feeling rather like there's not much point in trying to change your mind on this. That was my end game with this. "I was in it for my own selfish reasons that had nothing to do with identity politics or harassment or bullying, and had everything to do with keeping my media, the media that affected my personal life the most, keeping that honest and stopping in from attacking me. Convincing you of that was my end game, and I just don't think I can. And I'm more quite sure what your end game was, but if you think you got a shot at a win, I suggest playing it before I go to bed.

I will correct one misconception, tho:

If you read the articles, you would know that your identity as a market segment is not what keeps game developers employed anymore. The games industry now covers people of all genders from 5 - 85. North America is no longer the biggest market. Mobile worldwide is generating as much revenue as desktop and console gaming, and in a few years, the top mobile games beat out the best MMO and MOBA in revenue

When I said "My identity is responsible for keeping you in a job" I was not identifying myself as a male, or as young person, or a white person or a straight person or a cis person. I refere, as ever, to the only identity that matters to me, the one I choose, the identity of a gamer. Nor was I referring to games developers, I was talking to the games media outlets that declared the gamer identity to be not their audience.

I don't know where the idea that I was telling game devs that "Cishet young white males are your primary audience, so stop making things for other people and cater to MEEEEEE". I was telling games media "My identity is gamer, and gamers are the only people who care enough about games to read games media. We are not dead, we are the people who are your ony market."

I'm really struggeling with the idea that you can be a bullshitter without being a liar.

Most people caught up in pyramid schemes like Amway honestly believe in what they're selling. The problem is that what they're selling isn't all that honest. Or take for example, climate change denial or a great deal of tumblr.

To explain my bias, I work with people who came out of the games industry: AAA, indie, and mobile. The articles you consider "attacks" were not published in response to GamerGate. They were published because people inside the industry are having hard conversations about how to diversify their market beyond the "gamer" demographic of white guys 18-35 with disposable income.

All of which was explicitly said in the articles in question. And all of which is something that most gamers who were not trying to pick a fight understood.