#GamerGate lying press,smearing gamers.

[Apostate 28]

I wasn't sure if I should make a thread when this started as it seems trivial when we have situations in Syria and Ukraine but as it's grown so large to the point of breaking into mainstream news.

I also remember this thread from ages back and it's interesting that no one mentions abuse could be from rival companies pretending to be customers http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?161558-Game-Developer-Harassement-Article and lets not forget Doritosgate - http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/doritosgate

At it's core the #gamergate or the quinspiracy theory involves media manipulation and nepotistic netowrking with mostly the games journalism and other parts of the industry. Like a little videogames version of what was alledged in the snowden files.

To summarise it started off with allegations from an ex boyfriend that his indie dev girfriend was cheating on him with other people,those other people being involved in the games industry.

Censorship, when people discuss this occours, which is claimed to be due to the people involved using their influence.

Backlash against censorship happens.

FeministFrequency pops out a video, someone or thing makes threats towards creator of the video who promptly uses it for free publicity. Multiple news sites repeat this press release framing gamers as stupid women haters.

At roughly the same time period, press attacks on gamers across multiple prominent games sites happen within a short period of time decyring the death of gamers and how they are over.

Most main news sites take this idea and do their best to promote the idea that gamers are stupid, harrass people, are bigots and more, when ironically thats exactly what they are doing by insulting and degrading their customers and trying to force their own brand of politics onto them. Social justice warrior is a term you will hear more than a few times.

The continiuing attempt to smear gamers results in a petition being made which makes it look like it's the gamers that are bad. This also spawns yet more news pieces on multiple sites repeating the same message.

That is the petition.

https://medium.com/@andreaszecher/open-letter-to-the-gaming-community-df4511032e8a

I saw that Brian Hicks, Jiri Zlatohlavek and Matt Lightfoot have added their names to at as from Bohemia interactive which is probably not what you want when boycott lists are springing up. This is one example although it mostly deals with the media.

http://makealist.com/content/quinngategamergate-boycott-list

The BBC and mainstream newpaper theguardian have covered with the first guardian article from being written by someone who has ties to those involved and now claims to have left writing or been sacked.

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2f6o2w/the_guardians_jenn_franks_conflict_of_interest/

These links look it this issue and explain some of the finer points.

http://ogeeku.com/2014/08/31/war-over-zoe-quinn-nowinners/

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-gaming-community-is-not-a-wretched-hive-of-sexism-and-misogyny

http://uk.ign.com/blogs/robojules/2014/09/02/the-editor-has-no-clothes

http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-things-need-know-gamergate-scandal.php

[almanzo 144]

I've seen it... It's quite remarkable and an unusually strong flame war.

[instagoat 133]

When playing online games, I find that gamers are indeed rather often very hateful, aggressive, angry people. Sexism and Racism are rampant too, oftentimes: Former can be found galore in the threads on female characters in this game here and on the tracker.

Talking that away is problematic. Disregarding an obvious problem with gamer culture is bad, especially so because gamers often act like entitled brats who feel they are owed by the game producers. It has been bad for this game, but in some others Devs have received personal death threats in the physical mail over things done to their games. The fact that neither our community nor BI have acknowledged the viability of female characters nor the existence of female gamers in the shape of even a single face and voice in Arma 3 is not good.

However, that being said, generally games suffer from a bad reputation in the main media because of the popularity of so many games that are essentially only about shooting people. This is why most games who get media coverage in germany, for example, are covered by the blanket designation of "killer games". Continuous success by such franchises like Battlefield, COD or even Arma does not help to alleviate that perception.

The lack of press about all the other games (which, contrary to COD, often -are- actual games instead of glorified railshooters) that are out there, many of them at least not focused on violence and many completely non-violent, is definitively problematic too. Sometimes I feel like games are still a completely misunderstood medium, with a lot of stigma attached to it. The kind of vitriol directed towards gamers is direct evidence of that. But in general, as far as the media is concerned, this is a self-made problem in the sense that the people who are gaming journalists have often been part of the first or second wave of gamers and aren't trained journalists. Instead, they're people with an opinion who happen to write for gaming news outlets. But this decay of information and fact gathering and presenting can be seen not only in games journalism, but elsewhere too.

And as long as one is consuming the articles of the websites that are part of causing this upheaval, nothing will change. Conversely, if gamers and game publishers (ie, those people with the money. Individual companies are often too starved for funds to make industry-scaping projects and decisions.) do not step up and begin looking at Games as art and culture beyond mere entertainment, separate and different from any other medium, nothing will be presentable to the public eye that can re-shape the prevailing opinion.

A recent study found that today, female gamers apparently are in the slight majority over male gamers (adults both.), but the question of misogyny isn't in how many people are actual gamers, but how they are treated for their plumbing. Looking at our community, just look at some of the comments in the thread about female characters on the tracker and you will know that there are problems. General consent seems to be in the right direction, but again, ignoring the problems does not help improve our image.

My two convoluted cents.

[Tonci87 163]

Sadly many gamers ARE entitled brats. How old is the average gamer?

[[evo] dan 79]

Sadly many gamers ARE entitled brats. How old is the average gamer?

Mentally or physically?

[Tonci87 163]

Dan;2772117']Mentally or physically?

Well both in many cases....

[instagoat 133]

Well both in many cases....

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/08/report-adult-women-gamers-now-double-the-number-of-under-18-boys/

Average age of a gamer is 31 years. I think this only takes into account numbers in the US, but I would suspect that numbers in Europe in general are similar, at least for the central european countries. The average age here in the EU should be around 30 too.

[Janez 508]

31? I don't think so. Certainly not in CoD :p.

[maddogx 13]

31? I don't think so. Certainly not in CoD :p.

It should be noted that this report includes social media games, trivia games, online card games, mobile games etc., which have massive player bases that considerably skew the statistics.

When you start talking exclusively about PC and console based action oriented games, I would venture that the average age goes down significantly.

[Heinrich Kramer 172]

31? I don't think so. Certainly not in CoD :p.

that's exactly the problem

you can have 30 very cool people and 1 idiot

the one idiot will make all those 30 people look bad

the endresult is "all gamers are entitled brats" wich is not too fair for the 30 people who aren't idiots

[anguis 4]

Revelations of the past few days regarding this mess have confirmed for me what recent write-ups in RPS and ArsTechnica had led me to believe - the higher-profile games press are corrupt. cf. #gamergate #gamejournopros #notyourshield It appears a dev's been fired as a result of his support for #gamergate. (edit: I made a mistake on this one, I think - it looks like he deserved it)

Immaturity, entitlement, racism, sexism, etc. . . in the industry all deserve an examination. However, the games press itself, the filter through which we receive our info regarding those aforementioned issues, should be at the top of the list of institutions in this industry needing scrutiny. Right now, from what I've seen, they're not trustworthy.

Edited September 21, 2014 by Anguis

[Apostate 28]

Well there's been a lot more information coming out since I made this thread.

It's like an amatuerish media coup d'etat and the spying and plots that go with it. Either that or they're the useful idiots of bigger plan.

There has been continuing articles from websites that are either linked by PR connections or come under the same corporate organisation.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/21/GameJournoPros-we-reveal-every-journalist-on-the-list

There's also the political angle. http://theralphretort.com/exclusive-digra-backed-nokia-costikyan-involved/#more-1813

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/834/267/0b4.png

Wikipedia comes first when you search for gamergate but the article is incredibly one sided and points to yet another facet of of wikipedias insider censorship.

http://i.imgur.com/gYvqWOA.jpg

Some other websites have covered it better like http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate

There also seems to be a drive to censor other places like twitter,4chan,reddit and other message boards.

A case in point is the 4chan takeover conspiracy. http://imgur.com/gallery/G0eIGQx http://pastebin.com/8DY2Rzuw

The latest scandal was about Emma Watsons silly feminist speech and threats to leak nudes which turned out to be an attempt to censor 4chan or a hoax, or a hoax of a hoax by themselves.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/24/threat-post-naked-photographs-emma-watson-hoax-4chan

[NeMeSiS 11]

This is one of those problems that just goes away if everyone just shrugs and goes 'Who gives a shit'. I dont understand why anyone cares, or why Zoey Quinn set it off.

[st_dux 26]

This is one of those problems that just goes away if everyone just shrugs and goes 'Who gives a shit'. I dont understand why anyone cares, or why Zoey Quinn set it off.

My thoughts exactly.