Thoughts on gamergate

[metroid composite]

Note: I make assumptions that people reading this post are pretty intelligent (which most of the regulars on this forum are).  I would advise against linking this post to random people on the internet.


Gamergate on the whole, while it has not directly affected me, has been a bit of an emotional drain on me as it has affected game industry friends around me.  And for better or for worse I've been reading a lot about it.  Misinformation has been floating around, and also just an extraordinary amount of fluff.  Things do seem to be winding down now, though, so I'm collecting my thoughts.

Origins and Zoe Quinn

Most likely everyone is familiar with the basic story now; Zoe Quinn, who is an indie developer, and who has been in the news even last year (when in December 2013 the internet got angry about...I actually don't know what they were angry about that time; possibly just her game).  Anyway, this time, turns out she was cheating on her boyfriend.  Boyfriend posts about the infidelity.  And suddenly there's a mob of angry people on the internet.

So a little bit of context:

https://medium.com/@srachel_m/gamergate-launched-in-my-apartment-and-internet-im-sorry-not-that-sorry-13e5650fd172

This is a woman who is friends/acquaintances with Zoe and the boyfriend.  She suffered from some serious sexual harassment herself in the workplace, recognized similar emotional patterns in the boyfriend, and encouraged him to make the post.

And the general evidence on the internet points towards Zoe being...not very nice.  (For the Grefters who like psychological analysis, there is literally hours of analysis on the original chat logs).

That said, being not very nice is...not illegal, and not justification for death threats, and does not imply widespread corruption of videogame journalism.

Internet propagation and 4 chan

So...this is a Cracked article written by Zoe herself.  Most of this is stuff that is well-known; harassment happened.  The one interesting point to me is point #5:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-i-learned-as-internets-most-hated-person/

4 chan, or sites like it, have been known to organize campaigns in the past, trying to get hashtags trending by making fake feminist twitter accounts.  Zoe has been vocal about certain elements within the movement (such as #notyourshield) being planned and executed on 4 chan (complete with screenshots she took).

Meanwhile, Jennifer Allaway states that gamergate formed like a hate group, and at the time of writing, continued to operate like a hate group, detailing the recruitment tools, the way propaganda is framed to the outside world, etc.:

http://jezebel.com/gamergate-trolls-arent-ethics-crusaders-theyre-a-hate-1644984010

Ethics in Video Game Journalism

Despite "actually it's about ethics in video game journalism" becoming this year's punchline...there are indeed people who care about ethics in video game journalism.

Well...two camps really.  There's one camp that cares about feminism in video game journalism and wants it removed.  And another group that legit cares about ethical breaches.  The first camp honestly comes across as the louder camp, but doesn't really present much that I find worth discussing.  The second group:

http://blueplz.blogspot.com/2014/10/whose-side-am-i-on.html

Totalbiscuit here rambles on for quite a while, but nicely encapsulates a lot of ethical concerns in the massive third-to-last paragraph.  Now, Totalbiscuit is someone I've been familiar with for several years now due to his involvement in the SC2 community; I've seen no sign of him being a misogynist; quite the opposite if anything.  But what's interesting is combining this with Jennifer Allaway's research above.  She describes hate groups as needing a leader to get started, and the effective leadership of gamergate passing a couple of times.  So what happens when someone who is not hateful becomes a key leader of the movement?  Because certainly it seemed like that was what was happening...to a certain degree.  There were some people actively pushing back against Totalbiscuit, and certainly gamergate forums tended to contain plenty of "Mens Rights Activists".

Although that would be baseless speculation as of today, since within the last day, Totalbiscuit decided that it would be better to pursue the same ethical concerns without using the hashtag:

http://blueplz.blogspot.com/2014/11/i-spoke-to-david-rosen-of-wolfire-and.html

Impact on people in the game industry

The mood has been generally negative.  More women than usual have been talking about considering a new line of work.  I very much like this article on tackling the issue of recruiting and retaining female talent:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LaralynMcWilliams/20141030/229072/Shes_Not_Playing_It_Wrong.php

Feminism vs other social justice causes

Something I observed a while back that I thought was odd: 12 years ago, I could post something feminist on GameFAQs and it would not be an issue.  The reaction would be "Huh, you're one of those feminist people; I've heard that people like you exist."  The reaction is roughly what I would expect if I were to announce on a board that I had a nose ring.  "Interesting.  I'd never do that myself."

Lately the reaction has been very different, and much more negative.  If I post something feminist on a game forum like Reddit, I expect to get downvoted to roughly -15 or -20.  By comparison, something I've noticed at least on Starcraft forums (which does contain a few popular transgender personalities) is that positive transgender stuff tends to get upvoted, and transphobic stuff tends to get downvoted.  Similarly, I've notice that internet gaming forums tend to overall be very much in support of gay marriage.  This is all anecdotal, of course, but general internet mood is what leads to things blowing up rather than not being a big deal on the internet.

The #notyourshield hashtag is interesting, in that it is an anti-feminist tag, but the statements made within it are often of the form of "I'm a minority other than white female, and mainstream feminists have not been representing me well."  Which...naturally evolved into bringing some attention to Disability representation, and Transgender representation in games.  Not exactly what I would expect out of what is undeniably a pro-gamergate anti-feminism tag.  It is also noteworthy that the guy who runs 8-chan is a disabled man, and is pretty much universally liked (hell, from the one interview I heard, I liked him too; seemed like a reasonable guy).

But it does feel like some kind of bizarre universe, where people don't support things that everyone supported when I was 10 (like feminism), but do make statements on Albeism.

[Fenrir]

Good articles on GamerGate:

http://www.zenofdesign.com/gamergates-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week/
https://digg.com/2014/when-gamergate-hits-the-wrong-target


Gamergate is awful.

The pro GG arguments about ethics in videogame journalism remind me of the arguments against women's suffrage, or the arguments against gay marriage.
Some real arguments against women's suffrage at the time were "Women should stay at home, or they'll stop having children and humanity will die out" There were actual misguided people who thought they were saving humanity by getting associated with the "Women shouldn't vote because they're dumb" crowd.

Something I observed a while back that I thought was odd: 12 years ago, I could post something feminist on GameFAQs and it would not be an issue.  The reaction would be "Huh, you're one of those feminist people; I've heard that people like you exist."  The reaction is roughly what I would expect if I were to announce on a board that I had a nose ring.  "Interesting.  I'd never do that myself."

Lately the reaction has been very different, and much more negative.  If I post something feminist on a game forum like Reddit, I expect to get downvoted to roughly -15 or -20.  By comparison, something I've noticed at least on Starcraft forums (which does contain a few popular transgender personalities) is that positive transgender stuff tends to get upvoted, and transphobic stuff tends to get downvoted.  Similarly, I've notice that internet gaming forums tend to overall be very much in support of gay marriage.  This is all anecdotal, of course, but general internet mood is what leads to things blowing up rather than not being a big deal on the internet.

There are been a lot of articles on Kotaku, Gamasutra, Polygon etc on the media needing to be more inclusive towards women, and I think this is a push against that. There hasn't been a lot of talk about transgender stuff in comparison.

To a random 20-ish white guy, transgender people are rather inoffensive, they don't want to remove metal bikinis from our games like evil feminists.
Minorities are praised, as long as they don't actually want to change the status quo.

[metroid composite]

http://www.zenofdesign.com/gamergates-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week/

Yeah, seen a number of these already; gamergate has been imploding in the past week, and a lot of people have jumped ship.  Although honestly these stories are primarily valuable for a feeling of schadenfreude.  Like...here's a person in gamergate who is a terrible human being...and things ended badly for him.  Heh heh heh.

Granted, I don't think it's going to go away entirely, but those who are left seem primarily focused on driving Gawker Media out of existence because of a tweet that one of its writers made.  Gawker is a huge company that ought to keep gamergate occupied for quite some time (and honestly I have no particular attachment to Gawker, unlike Gamasutra which gamergate thankfully does not seem to be targeting any more).

[Dark Holy Elf]

I have nothing to add at the moment, but this was a good read.

[Cmdr_King]

The #notyourshield hashtag is interesting, in that it is an anti-feminist tag, but the statements made within it are often of the form of "I'm a minority other than white female, and mainstream feminists have not been representing me well."  Which...naturally evolved into bringing some attention to Disability representation, and Transgender representation in games.  Not exactly what I would expect out of what is undeniably a pro-gamergate anti-feminism tag.  It is also noteworthy that the guy who runs 8-chan is a disabled man, and is pretty much universally liked (hell, from the one interview I heard, I liked him too; seemed like a reasonable guy).

But it does feel like some kind of bizarre universe, where people don't support things that everyone supported when I was 10 (like feminism), but do make statements on Albeism.

Frankly I think it's just a smokescreen.  At some point it came in vogue on the internet to call any seemingly obsessive person an 'aspie' in the same vein that anyone who did something stupid was a ''tard', probably with a few other similar uses.  So folks who want to deflect attention away from their own bigotry simply find the smallest example of the other side using such language (and once those sorts of insults work their way into your vocabulary it's very hard to get them back out) and call hypocrisy.  "I can't be sexist, there's totally ladies over here!  But by calling out 8chan you've obviously proven you're an ableist!"  Drop mic.

Something I observed a while back that I thought was odd: 12 years ago, I could post something feminist on GameFAQs and it would not be an issue.  The reaction would be "Huh, you're one of those feminist people; I've heard that people like you exist."  The reaction is roughly what I would expect if I were to announce on a board that I had a nose ring.  "Interesting.  I'd never do that myself."

Lately the reaction has been very different, and much more negative.  If I post something feminist on a game forum like Reddit, I expect to get downvoted to roughly -15 or -20.  By comparison, something I've noticed at least on Starcraft forums (which does contain a few popular transgender personalities) is that positive transgender stuff tends to get upvoted, and transphobic stuff tends to get downvoted.  Similarly, I've notice that internet gaming forums tend to overall be very much in support of gay marriage.  This is all anecdotal, of course, but general internet mood is what leads to things blowing up rather than not being a big deal on the internet.

For a few reasons I think Feminism has reached the end of its lifespan as a term. 
-People, men or women, in certain walks of life can easily look around themselves and not really see any gross disparity between men and women.  You tend to have to be fairly well-to-do for financial ones to be obvious, and gender roles being more strongly reinforced at lower social-economic strata means that nobody would really notice reproductive issues.  Victim blaming is enormously, sickeningly widespread in western (or at least USian) culture such that it's hard to convince anyone rape culture is even an issue.  In other words, the traditional causes of Feminism now have to address issues that are more invisible than ever.
- Related to above, the word itself carries connotations that it is about the advancement of women, not the broader goal of gender equality.
- Division within the movement, largely re: why do we only address issues about middle class white women.
- And stemming from all three, the past 20 years misogynist of all stripes have been able to twist the narrative towards one of 'feminazis' and so forth.  And even where they are not successful, the combination of the second and third have made Feminism a word with very strong negative connotations regardless.  I've run across anecdotes (if there are more formal studies on the matter, please link!) where Feminist just removed the word from their front pages and logos, without making any other changes to their content, and drastically reduced click-away rates and garnered much more positive comments.  People hate the word even where they agree with the message now.
And the last thing, which is more of a personal thought.
- Even knowing that Feminism is about gender equality, by using a gendered word, you influence how you approach the problems of gender inequality.  And I think that unfortunately we can no longer address those problems with those approaches.  The problems in the western world now are broadly caused by a) traditional gender roles, with masculine roles being the larger issue  and b) the greater issues of wealth disparity and dysfunctional government creating an environment of desperation and hopelessness.  My instinct is that gender equality will largely plateau until we can start healing those two wrongs, and they aren't really ones you can address by changing laws or speaking to an audience that's primarily women.  At the same time I'm very uncertain that you can change the name and face of the movement to have more inclusive language, because that runs so great a risk of starting to kowtow to the MRA narrative, and while the gender disparities that men face are very much things that need to be folded better into the gender equality movement it categorically cannot encourage the existing MRA movement to lend their voice or their tactics, because they are wholly devoted to undoing gender equality as it stands now.

So um.  Words. Yeah.

[Grefter]

My opinion of Gamergate was pretty low to start with, not because it was a loose coalition of leaderless people trying to meet a goal (I have clearly supported movements like that in the past), but because the reported targets don't seem to directly correlate and they definitely don't have much to do with the actions taken by people aligned to the movement from day one.  When you are apparently rejecting the "media" defined shape of a gamer and seeking more ethical reporting from games journalism it would really help to have some linking to how modern journalism is skewing the concept of what our core audience is (which given that the things that get rated high amongst professional reviews is media targeted at Men aged 15 - 25.  That has To do with ethics?).

What we did see day one though is a campaign that was launched by Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend which butts heads with these "ethics" that they are purporting to back.  The source doesn't have nearly enough distance, all facts should be checked and verified, not take that source and build an army around him.  Since the movement has started with that you get a lot of discussion around Zoe Quinn's character, which might in fact not be very nice, but is completely irrelevant to the conversation of journalistic ethics.  You can just as easily report on nasty people as you can nice people.  It sure does suggest a whole lot of gender politics at play though.

With a movement that from day 1 has been motivated by gender politics and having an awful lot of discussion stemming from "how that slut fucked her at to a good score" and other verbiage along those lines, it is not really surprising that the movement continued to be incredibly gender focused.

The actions taken are the most damning to the movement though.  Now I am a pretty bleak political creature, I loves me my Realpolitik and can often understand the ends justifying the means.  When your ends are vague and tinged with regressive gender politics I don't really support a scorched earth policy like is deployed by the movement here. Boycotting companies to pressure them into trying to bankrupt or stifle opposing voices, harassing opposition until they give up, death threats to stop them from making public speeches.  All of this is incredibly aggressive and eliminates chance for actual dialogue with the target they are actually trying to effect change on.  Not to mention the other crazy unethical (if not blatantly illegal) activities like all the doxxing etc.

A peaceful protest this is most certainly not.

There is an awful lot of bemoaning of Gamergate having been cooped by Men's Rights Activists and honestly I think that misses the key fact that gender politics has been a key part of the rhetoric from day one.  It is more the other way around, there is an underlying gender political issue (ermagerd GIRLS are playing my videoaaaaames and no one yes going to make games for ME anymore) and it found a public outlet through a single point of ethics scandal.  People tried to use the latter but all we got was the former because the ethics scandal is rooted in gender politics to begin with.

Which is to say, fuck gamer gate.  If you want to effect change in media coverage, do your part by helping those you support, not by tearing down others because you disagree.  You need to be able to have open discourse, not flaming shit throwing contests.  Second of all, indie games are not going to take away "normal" games.  There is still a market just as big as there ever was for those games, that market will be looked after just as much as it ever was.  You might see the medium as a whole expand to gather a wider user base, but it isn't reducing the number of games that are coming out.  The thing that is going to kill AAA games and things like them is the already high risk nature of development for them blowing out even further. 

[Luther Lansfeld]

- Division within the movement, largely re: why do we only address issues about middle class white women. 

Interestingly, problems which disproportionately affect lower income, non-white women are issues are actually being talked about a lot (domestic violence, rape, reproductive rights), but are often framed in a way to obfuscate who a large number of the victims of these crimes are. The victim of these crimes that are talked about most often are often pretty blonde girls, not impoverished racial minorities. Wage differential issues are another interesting debate -- feminist-leaning people often talk about the wage gap, but rarely seem to highlight that it is just as dependent on race as it is on gender (and that white women make more than racial minorities with the possible exception of Asian men).

On another note, did ya'll hear about Gamergate's amazing idea to send Nintendo complaints about Polygon giving Bayonetta 2 a lowish score for being sexist (so they could, what, pressure Polygon to change it?).  Nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like telling a large company to force a gaming magazine to give scores you like. Such ethics, much Gamergate, wow. Oh, no, I forgot, nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like harassing a woman who isn't involved in the discussion in any way because you're a creepy asshole.

I could probably stream of consciousness hate-rant for a while here but I will just say:

omg i hate all of these people where is the remote for my satellite laser

[Fenrir]

On another note, did ya'll hear about Gamergate's amazing idea to send Nintendo complaints about Polygon giving Bayonetta 2 a lowish score for being sexist

Lowish = 7.5

Interesting discussion, and I have to say that I'm pretty glad that, around here, we're all agreeing that fuck gamergate

[SnowFire]

GamerGate is too stupid to merit serious commentary.  Better to focus on the funnier parts of the fail and just call the police for the worse parts (e.g. harassment, death threats).

http://i.imgur.com/LwXs69T.png  --> On the merits of whether having a fictional character repeat your stance makes it more convincing.  (Be sure to read the reply boxed in the red rectangle.)

http://pastebin.com/ZCiWSsnk  --> Okay guys, arguing on Twitter is bogging down, let's go convince the enemy's home base of teenage girls on Tumblr of the fundamental truths of gamergate using cute pro-GG images as replies to posts...  which will convince them about our stance on video game journalism...  and prove we're not against them...  guys?

(Okay, fine.  My serious comment: the one, and only one, "serious" issue raised by GamerGate is something like "stop whining about games using methods I disagree with."  Bullshit.  Commentary is let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom territory; even if half of the flowers are wrong and dumb, people will disagree about which half.  If you hate Polygon & Anita Sarkeesian, don't read them!  http://www.popehat.com/2014/10/26/ten-short-rants-about-gamergate/  made a good comparison - the conservatives eventually stopped whining about "liberal media bias" and went and made Fox News.  Magic of the ideas marketplace.  Stop trying to shut up commentary that other people enjoy, and instead make your own Brogamers Weekly site or whatever that has content you like.)

[Cotigo]

Interesting discussion, and I have to say that I'm pretty glad that, around here, we're all agreeing that fuck gamergate

I have nothing to add.

[NotMiki]

Thanks for the writeup, MC.

Two thoughts disposing of GamerGate:

The surest way to reveal bias against a group of people is to take two morally culpable people, one of which belongs to a particular group, the other of which is just like you, and see how you react to the two of them.

Anyone who didn't jump ship the second the filth started spewing forth deserves the derision being chucked in their general direction.  Either they're conscious misogynists or simply care so little about misogyny that they're willing to allow themselves to be associated with misogynists.  Which makes them misogynists.

For a few reasons I think Feminism has reached the end of its lifespan as a term.

I don't agree, CK.  I think you're right that the economic downturn, which has been pretty hard on men, has reduced public receptiveness to it.
But mostly I don't agree because there's a potent strain of thought that wants men and women to remain *cough* separate but equal.  And they don't mind saying it.  If you ask, what forces keep men down, the answer is: the economy.  If you ask, what forces keep women down, the answer is: men.  And I think that that's a long-simmering fight that is sure to flare up.  The term feminism will find fresh life.  Bet on it.

On another note, did ya'll hear about Gamergate's amazing idea to send Nintendo complaints about Polygon giving Bayonetta 2 a lowish score for being sexist (so they could, what, pressure Polygon to change it?).  Nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like telling a large company to force a gaming magazine to give scores you like. Such ethics, much Gamergate, wow. Oh, no, I forgot, nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like harassing a woman who isn't involved in the discussion in any way because you're a creepy asshole.

I'm gratified and more than a bit surprised that Bayonetta 2 didn't get pilloried by reviewers.  The timing couldn't have been worse for it.

gamergate has been imploding in the past week, and a lot of people have jumped ship.  Although honestly these stories are primarily valuable for a feeling of schadenfreude.  Like...here's a person in gamergate who is a terrible human being...and things ended badly for him.  Heh heh heh.

I disagree.  It's important that the GamerGate movement in general and a smattering of awful human beings in specific get dragged through the mud.  The anonymous, abstracted nature of the internet serves to shield wrongdoers from the consequences of their actions.  The knowledge that the rest of the world treats them like a punchline is a bare minimum of what it takes to keep these people down.



Throughout this whole stupid affair I've wondered whether the quote unquote gaming community really is more toxic than your average hobbyists, or if the attention this is getting amounts to confirmation bias.  Little of column A, little of column B, probably.  Go to any news website, scroll through the comments on anything.  Pick an article about that nurse that was quarantined, but only if you want to hate humanity.  There's a lot of vileness out there, and it easily matches the GamerGate stuff, minus the death threats seriously just don't read any comments about that nurse.

Anyway, neckbeards.  When did this term come into existence?  I remember a time when moderately nerdy kids who loved to play videogames didn't have a pat term for the people who are less socially with it than even them (in their minds, anyway).  Now people who self-identify as gamers - of all the things - are hurling invective at those neckbeards who must be the ones doxxing Anita Sarkeesian and sending death threats because girls won't date them.  They're making the rest of the gamers look bad and they must be ostracized because they're NERRRRRRDS or something.  As if extreme misogyny is solely the province of the extremely socially awkward.  As if!  This coming from self-identifying gamers.  What a world.  What a world.

[Lady Door]

My nerds are better than your nerds.

That may or may not be an ironic euphemism, depending on who's making the comment.

[Cmdr_King]

If you ask, what forces keep men down, the answer is: the economy.  If you ask, what forces keep women down, the answer is: men. 

I think this is our point of disagreement.  I'd answer...
For women: Douchebag capitalists who use the weak economy as leverage to perpetuate existing disadvantages well past when they would have dissipated naturally (who are almost always men).  Also men.
For men: The limited accepted definitions of masculinity.  ie men.

[metroid composite]

Anyone who didn't jump ship the second the filth started spewing forth deserves the derision being chucked in their general direction.  Either they're conscious misogynists or simply care so little about misogyny that they're willing to allow themselves to be associated with misogynists.  Which makes them misogynists.

I'm not sure I necessarily agree with this, at least in the case of someone who has enough clout or time to change the dialog.  It's a movement, which, at a certain point had extremely unclear and poorly defined goals, and a wide range of supporters which included, yes, complete misogynists, to very well-meaning individuals.

I don't blame the people who decided "I should stand up and make my voice heard, because if I don't, then the voice of the trolls will be the only voice, and there are actually journalistic ethics issues here that I would like to see addressed, and would like to see as the main focus."

I don't even entirely mind some of the anti-feminist talk.  The argument against the Bayonetta 2 review went something like "the 7.5 score gets factored into the metacritic total, and several companies give salary bonuses based on that total."  I've been on the receiving end of stuff like this.  I've worked on the game that got 79 instead of 80 on gamerankings, and missing out on a bonus because of that.  And yes, it often is because of one low score from one reviewer for a stupid reason.

That said, I think there are much worse reasons than feminism to mark a game down.  I've had Tony Hawk games reviewed where the review started with "I never really understood these games or figured out how the scoring system works."  There was a SSBM review that said "I keep knocking off my opponent with what should be a finishing blow, but he keeps jumping back on.  I don't understand."  And Uncharted 3 got a 4/10 review largely as clickbait (if you read the review, the complaints aren't all that substantial, but the 4/10 score gets people to click on the review when they see it in a list of reviews).  At least with the Bayonetta 2 review, it's clear that the reviewer made an honest effort to get into the game, and his complaints were elements that reduced his enjoyment of the game.

Honestly, when a game I've worked on gets slammed for feminism, my reaction has historically been "yuuuup."

But I can understand why there are people who don't want the salary bonuses of game developers to swing wildly depending on whether a reviewer feels strongly about feminism.  Among other things, this is something that is outside of the developer's control.  (Whereas more mundane review measures like framerate and hours of gameplay are within the developer's control). 

I disagree.  It's important that the GamerGate movement in general and a smattering of awful human beings in specific get dragged through the mud.  The anonymous, abstracted nature of the internet serves to shield wrongdoers from the consequences of their actions.  The knowledge that the rest of the world treats them like a punchline is a bare minimum of what it takes to keep these people down.

Oh, let me be clear, I want to see people put behind bars.  It has been tricky to put people on the internet behind bars for...at least 17 years BUT there is now signs that progress is being made, that legal punishment may finally be attainable:

http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/4/7157433/brianna-wu-death-threat-reward

THAT is exciting.


By comparison, for example the biggest internal scandal of that past week in gamergate is KingOfPol falsified some evidence, it was exposed by people in gamergate, and KingOfPol is no longer particularly welcome in the movement.  This makes gamergate look like a rational movement that cares about verifying sources.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I read it that report with interest, it was some juicy drama, but I don't have any particularly strong conclusions from that drama.

[Grefter]

I don't even entirely mind some of the anti-feminist talk.  The argument against the Bayonetta 2 review went something like "the 7.5 score gets factored into the metacritic total, and several companies give salary bonuses based on that total."  I've been on the receiving end of stuff like this.  I've worked on the game that got 79 instead of 80 on gamerankings, and missing out on a bonus because of that.  And yes, it often is because of one low score from one reviewer for a stupid reason.

But that is neither A) a problem for the reviewer or B) a great way to promote ethical journalism.

A) specifically is speaking very close to my heart (to play the #justcorporatethings card) these days with bonus measures being drastically misguided by employers and their motivations (not because I missed a bonus this year because of it although I did),because what I am working on at the moment is a project where we discuss business culture a great deal and KPIs a lot.  The motivation to perform being incredibly arbitrary and outside of your direct control significantly impact worker moral and drives poor behaviours (especially if they are unfeasible to obtain.  If you know you are working on a piece of middleware that might be good and find an audience, prove profitable, but isn't going to review well and you know your bonus is tied to an 80 on Metacritic?  What kind of incentive is that?).  You need to have measures that align to the work people do and actually measure the outcomes you want (if you even HAVE them, in a healthy business you could even just rely on managers discretion).  Critical success does not equal sales.  It doesn't even equate to profitability.  It might suggest it in a typical model where the majority of your profit is the flash in the pan first week or two of sales, but that is far from the only effective model (like fuuuuuuuuck anyone that ties bonuses like that to stuff getting Early Access or are perpetual games like MMOs).

This is an industry level problem or an employer level problem.  Journalists don't have responsibility to deal with that.  It isn't my customer's fault that the grade they give my entire business impacts my pay.  It isn't the level designer or graphic designer's fault that the default pistol is broken in Multiplayer, but they eat the penalties just the same.

If a Journalist wants to protest this kind of ranking the answer isn't to feed into it by bumping up the average rating to an 8 to help out a bro, it is to post a positive review and refuse to partake in the system entirely.  If you as a FAN want to protest it, the answer is to have a proper dialogue about it or start frequenting either publications that don't work in that framework either or reviews that don't "register" with Metacritic.  It isn't to blow up at someone for giving an honest review on the game.

B) Well like I said, I don't think Gamer Gate is actually ABOUT journalism in any capacity at this (or any) point other than as a smoke screen, but inflating scores is like literally what that side of it is supposed be opposed to.  So the GGer that would be supporting a higher rating on Bayonetta by not be there for the gender politics... I am not really sure what they are doing.

And CK, I don't think Feminism is anywhere near done as a term just because the term has been coopted as a slur in some parts of culture.  Discarding over a hundred years of legacy in favour of something short term is counter to showing the weight of the movement I think.  Where "Gay Marriage" has had very little history of success but switching the rhetoric over to "Marriage equality" helped confer the intent of the movement, Feminism has a whole lot more good to its name once you remotely educate yourself on the issue (Not just suffrage, but the advent and spread of availability of birth control is a huge huge one) and the way you can see people even still 50 years later actively seeking to tear down the work it did helps with perspective significantly.

[metroid composite]

It isn't the level designer or graphic designer's fault that the default pistol is broken in Multiplayer, but they eat the penalties just the same.

Small quip: usually the level/graphic designer will have an opportunity to give feedback on something like that.  I've been told that I affected the writing of the ending of The Last of Us.  I'm a programmer whose official duties really only involved ]code, and working with designers and animators.  I also wasn't even on the project for all that long.  In the case of multiplayer in particular most companies will have company-wide playtests that ask for feedback.

Not that this is a guarantee you can influence things.  I've certainly been at companies where people didn't listen (and then two months later figured out what I told them; could have saved yourself two months of work, dude).  But in a healthy game-development company, you can have some influence on most areas of the project.


Although really, the sensible people flying under the gamergate flag (like TotalBiscuit) have been calling for things like "lets remove numbers from review scores entirely, and thereby remove metacritic from the equation."  And some publications (like Kotaku) already did so way before this blew up.

[superaielman]

Quinn sounds pretty terrible and so is gaming media (This is a tradition going back to Nintendo Power), but that doesn't at all justify or condone the attacks or viciousness. I don't have much use for gamer culture in general on the broad scale, I find it either insufferable or full of bitter assholes.

[Luther Lansfeld]

On another note, did ya'll hear about Gamergate's amazing idea to send Nintendo complaints about Polygon giving Bayonetta 2 a lowish score for being sexist (so they could, what, pressure Polygon to change it?).  Nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like telling a large company to force a gaming magazine to give scores you like. Such ethics, much Gamergate, wow. Oh, no, I forgot, nothing screams ethics in gaming journalism like harassing a woman who isn't involved in the discussion in any way because you're a creepy asshole.

I'm gratified and more than a bit surprised that Bayonetta 2 didn't get pilloried by reviewers.  The timing couldn't have been worse for it.

Bayonetta is a bit of an interesting case because it's a pretty popular game among women, and it has an undeniably empowered if sexualized main female character. I think the game brings forth an interesting discussion about sexual empowerment and if a game can simultaneously have a sexualized-yet-empowered female main character and not "cater to the male gaze", which seems to be the chief complaint about the game(s). I think discussions on sexualization of female characters need to be taken in the context of the game's overall feminist credentials. I also think it is interesting that in the analogous 3D action game, Devil May Cry, Dante is a hot dude who doesn't wear a shirt and seems to be designed to be slobbered over by girls -- silver hair, sexy red coat, kinda bishie. I think both he and Bayonetta were consciously designed to be appealing to both genders!

http://www.negativeworld.org/feature/11720/female-gamers-speak-about-the-bayonetta-franchise-part-1-of-2#.VGMKb_nF-So

A diverse range of opinions on Bayonetta from female gamers.

That said, I think there are much worse reasons than feminism to mark a game down.  I've had Tony Hawk games reviewed where the review started with "I never really understood these games or figured out how the scoring system works."  There was a SSBM review that said "I keep knocking off my opponent with what should be a finishing blow, but he keeps jumping back on.  I don't understand."  And Uncharted 3 got a 4/10 review largely as clickbait (if you read the review, the complaints aren't all that substantial, but the 4/10 score gets people to click on the review when they see it in a list of reviews).  At least with the Bayonetta 2 review, it's clear that the reviewer made an honest effort to get into the game, and his complaints were elements that reduced his enjoyment of the game.

Honestly, when a game I've worked on gets slammed for feminism, my reaction has historically been "yuuuup."

As long as your apply your standards of feminism consistently, which Polygon has failed to do. Games such as Grand Theft Auto 5 without female protags or much of a female presence (I scroll down a list of GTA5 characters and about the fifteenth character listed is a woman, and zero characters that are listed as "central characters") are given 9.5/10 without as far as I read mention of the issue, while Bayonetta 2, a game that the two bad-ass-est people in the cast are both women, is sexist? I understand that different people give different reviews, but to me I read those two reviews side-by-side and I draw that conclusion that people are more uncomfortable with having women who are 'sexualized' (in this case, in a way less pandering way than your average harem anime) than that fact that GTA barely has a female presence.  In the article I linked above, there were one woman who explicitly said that she would prefer a game with no female characters than one with a sexualized female main. I find this to be a fairly absurd view that is hard to take seriously.

[Luther Lansfeld]

http://time.com/3576870/worst-words-poll-2014/

Feminist has gotten the most votes on "words to ban in 2015".

[Lady Door]

I can't talk about this at length because I've already spent a lot of time railing at the storm and I am just so damn pissed at everyone that it's hard to be coherent.

I work in marketing. I deal with games journalists all the time. I also spend a lot of time in market research and playtesting, speak to developers across the world, talk to Apple and Google and other first party distributors, and otherwise watch and analyze customer behavior on a micro and macro level as my job.

People suck.

I hear (and personally believe) that there is room for the kinds of games feminists would "approve" of that wouldn't alienate the gamers who consider any effort in this direction to be compromising the art of games. But, time and time again, the fucking stereotypes are true.

Men like FPS and strategy games. Women play more (mobile) games for lower average amounts of time. Women are turned away from violent or aggressive art and play. Men are drawn to it. Men spend more money on (mobile) games by a huge factor. Would having more games appealing to a female audience without alienating the male audience make women play more games? Maybe. But "maybe" does not justify millions of dollars and thousands of man hours. "Maybe" could ruin a company, even a giant one.

Game journalists are an incestuous bunch. There aren't very many of them (relative to "real" journalists), they cover the exact same pool of material, they talk to very similar audiences. They all know, talk to, and party with each other. They make money because the sites they write for make money, and getting the sites they work for money means appealing to an audience that often doesn't know what it wants but sure as hell shares and reads stupid BuzzFeed articles and talks about Polygon's sensationalist reviews and headlines.

GamerGate is a minority.

It's loud, and they seem to be many, but it's not what it seems to be. And yes, hearing about it everywhere is granting it a certain sort of notoriety and attention -- but the cliche about there not being any bad publicity is painfully true. Kotaku's Alexa rank has risen more than 150% in the last six weeks. In fact, every single games news site's traffic has increased and continues to increase. GamerGate may be raising some sort of amorphous awareness about the issues of feminism and corruption and whatever the heck else they think they are, but their actions are having the opposite effect.

And so, I continue to pander to the mostly quiet masses and their wallets. I thank the fuckers that are attacking me, attacking my profession, attacking the things I love, because they have increased our sales and downloads. And they make me hate my job a little bit more every day.

*They, women, men, etc. is marketing speak for the actions of an identified group. I hate it when the whole speaks for the individual, and it doesn't adequately reflect any given individual at all, but that whole buys games in a pattern that, like it or not, divides on artificial identifiers like gender and age.

[Grefter]

Is it Polygon's stance on feminism in gaming or the individual reviewer's?  Was it the same reviewer?  You can have similar issues where someone is handed a genre they don't like to review.

What should an author do, not rate something with their political views on the table?  It is a 9/10 game that I hated every second of because it made me uncomfortable to play (and presumably wasn't the point of the game).  Do publishers only hire people with a message the brand wants to projects?  That loads gender politics into your entire organisation, which would be fine for some brands, but isn't really Polygon's main drive.

A review is a snapshot of someone's opinion at a time, they are going to be inherently inconsistent and subjective.  It isn't a science where it is repeatable and testable result.  You follow a certain publication rather than an individual personality because you have past experience with them tending to have opinions that you find useful to see.  It is up to editorial to try and keep that consist tone that readers are used to getting from their pool of writers (which will be shifting obviously as will the editor).

Having a sharp spike in a difference of opinion is probably not the greatest piece of journalism, but would really speak more to who was selected to cover the piece, so a possible mistake made well before the score was even thought of.  It would just be a mistake though, not corruption in video game journalism or a big scandal.  It is someone picked round peg for square hole when they are marketing to square peg enthusiasts.

So specifically on Bayonetta 2, are we shocked that this specific game got handed to a writer with a bit of an agenda in gender politics?  I wouldn't really think so, it is the sequel to a game that already spurred a massive amount of debate about it.  I can certainly see why an editor would farm that out to them.  Now GTA5 definitely did bring up some interesting discussions about feminism and the roles of women in it (so did GTA4 from memory, but it was much more sedate and delayed from memory), but the discourse around it was a little less loaded, so it is easy to see why a similar process wasn't part of the he decision making there.

Does that mean the publication fucked up?  Eh I don't really think so honestly.  As long as the reviewer for Bayonetta consistently reviews like that that and the message is on point, they are a consistent producer of content and they don't only ever review "gender games" it is a bit of an unfortunate trend, but not the end of the world.  I would argue that another review along side it would be pretty solid (noting that you should be pretty consistent about having multiple views there, not needing to chaperone the "feminist reviewer" with a "real reviewer" counterpoint), but I don't think that is particularly feasible solution just because people aren't interested in paying two people when you could just get one.

The second post holy fuck that is depressing, but it is just people being sick of hearing people talk about it.

In the development process, peer review is fantastic Met and a work environment where it is taken on board is a pretty healthy one.  Or where you are accountable for everyone else's output though  that you at the end of the day have no direct control of is toxic.  It drives a team culture, sure, but it is a culture of "work together and make sure things are good and don't you dare fuck anything up" instead of "work together because you trust each other".  You are getting your whole team to manage each other.

Edit - and to preempt a little bit.  If everyone is there to make thirst possible game that they can so they aren't going to manage each other, why do you need the bonus as an incentive?  Who is it motivating, what function is it actually performing?  It stinks of a way to cut costs ignoring the impact it has on your staff.

[AndrewRogue]

The long and short of it, for me, is I'm finding both "pro-GG" and "anti-GG" sentiments increasingly frustrating. Both sides are so polarized that it is pretty much impossible to actually discuss anything because everyone is too busy shouting "stupid SJW's" and "stupid misogynists." Which is unfortunate, since there are some worthwhile discussions being had. Frankly, I find the fence sitters (that is the people who tend not to identify themselves as either pro/anti-GG and focus on individual talking points) the most enjoyable people to follow in this discussion, as they are generally far enough removed from each camp to speak calmly.

That said, do I like "modern" #GG? Not really. Even setting aside discussions of how the movement really gained traction and how a very loud minority has often co-opted it, there are just some elements of their rhetoric that I don't like. I also think their methodology is a bit misguided, particularly when it comes to social elements. Trying to make Kotaku less "liberal" feels like a fool's errand. They'd be better served by, in all seriousness, making their own news site, or at least a centralized hub to point towards reviewers who match up with their viewpoiont. It actually isn't an unfeasible goal these days.

Is it Polygon's stance on feminism in gaming or the individual reviewer's?  Was it the same reviewer?  You can have similar issues where someone is handed a genre they don't like to review.

What should an author do, not rate something with their political views on the table?  It is a 9/10 game that I hated every second of because it made me uncomfortable to play (and presumably wasn't the point of the game).  Do publishers only hire people with a message the brand wants to projects?  That loads gender politics into your entire organisation, which would be fine for some brands, but isn't really Polygon's main drive.

A review is a snapshot of someone's opinion at a time, they are going to be inherently inconsistent and subjective.  It isn't a science where it is repeatable and testable result.  You follow a certain publication rather than an individual personality because you have past experience with them tending to have opinions that you find useful to see.  It is up to editorial to try and keep that consist tone that readers are used to getting from their pool of writers (which will be shifting obviously as will the editor).

What I've seen is that the prevailing opinion is #GG wants something like: https://www.christcenteredgamer.com/index.php/reviews/pc-mac/5520-bioshock-infinite where the social/political elements are separated from the game.

[Excal]

I forget the link, but there is actually a GamerGate News site now, where it feels like they're actually trying to give the news coverage that they feel best espouses the Gater movement. 

[Fenrir]

I only read Eurogamer and sometimes Polygon.
In general I only agree with Grefter.

I hear (and personally believe) that there is room for the kinds of games feminists would "approve" of that wouldn't alienate the gamers who consider any effort in this direction to be compromising the art of games. But, time and time again, the fucking stereotypes are true.

Men like FPS and strategy games. Women play more (mobile) games for lower average amounts of time. Women are turned away from violent or aggressive art and play. Men are drawn to it. Men spend more money on (mobile) games by a huge factor. Would having more games appealing to a female audience without alienating the male audience make women play more games? Maybe. But "maybe" does not justify millions of dollars and thousands of man hours. "Maybe" could ruin a company, even a giant one.

I agree that, as far as AAA games are concerned, doing a bold move like only having a non sexualized black female main character requires some guts, and would probably result in lost sales, so it's not happening because of how AAA games work. (There's Remember Me but it's been forgotten for these reasons)

But:
- I really doubt it would hurt sales to not rely on sexist tropes, so why not raise awareness to take them away? I actually think Bioware become successful in part because it got more inclusive.

- Supposed lost sales due to female characters only happens with AAA games. I reaaaally don't think Crypt of the Necrodancer got hurt by having a female non sexualized male character. Neither did Valkyrie Profile, probably? (Bit more difficult to realize here, but hey)

- Even in AAA games, the option of having a female main character can be actually beneficial to the devs and not just a money waster. Consider this: Lords of the Fallen is a WoWified Souls knockoff. I was going to buy this game, because hey, souls is my favorite series, but when i saw that you can only play as bald angry butly white guy I just kinda stopped caring. Real lost sale there. I probably wouldn't have bought ME2-3 at a high price without Femshep. Note that all this isn't even a conscious choice. I'm in a minority but who can really say how small that minority is?

What I've seen is that the prevailing opinion is #GG wants something like: https://www.christcenteredgamer.com/index.php/reviews/pc-mac/5520-bioshock-infinite where the social/political elements are separated from the game.

Expecting this from other people is really stupid and immature.
Can you imagine movie critics like this? "Great acting and cinematography. 9/10. The movie promotes rape though, morality score: 3/10."

[AndrewRogue]

Expecting this from other people is really stupid and immature.
Can you imagine movie critics like this? "Great acting and cinematography. 9/10. The movie promotes rape though, morality score: 3/10."

Not really? I mean, wanting that from EVERY reviewer, yes. But wanting it from some isn't really that different from wanting reviewers to focus on the socialogical aspects. I mean, frankly, I'm uninterested in discussions on whether Archipelago is a good/bad board game on the basis of how it handles the subject of colonialism and tend to stray away from reviewers who talk about it.

So basically, I don't think it is that unreasonable to want to see reviews that focus largely on the gameplay element and either ignore or seperate out the social stuff. I mean, that's what you do with reviews: you find folks who have similar opinions/focuses, as they are most likely to feel similarly about titles.

The movie comparison is sort of flawed because games... well... have a game element which can exist wholly independently of the story elements. Playing P4U as a competitive fighting game is a wholly different experience than playing it as a story-driven game, and these elements are so discrete that their relevance to individual gamers varies heavily. Plenty of people give no shits about the story mode and could it have it be terrible and still consider it an amazing title, and others could loathe the gameplay but adore the story mode. And some like the whole package.

So yeah. Ultimately, I think pushing for all reviewers to use the same metric is stupid, but wanting to foster some reviews that focus tighter on the "game" is fine. I'm less interested in those reviews, but there's nothing wrong with that.