ELI5: Why the videogame industry and gamers?

HughyHugh · 23時間前

Easy targets + established Internet reputation of harassment

shinbreaker · 23時間前

Because it's the only industry that flinched. For example, Anita has done videos about movies and TV for years before she talked about video games. None of those industries gave a care. Music, movies, and film have all had various crusades against them but in the end, the industries carries on. But thanks to SJW journalists who are trying to impress Anita, fake outrage is created left and right and the industry flinched.

2yph0n · 23時間前

College these days are offering "Women's Studies", "Sexuality Studies", and other social/political science degrees.

They aren't hard to get into as oppose to STEM, business, lawyer fields.

In school, they are TAUGHT that it is the white heterosexual males that oppresses everybody. These degrees are created in devotion to go against the "oppressors".

They DO go into the movie industry. For example, they demand MORE 'strong' female characters and take movies out of context like Mad Max with their social media methods.

The reason why they focus more on video games is due to the fact that the gaming industry have a more prominent role in the lives of the younger generation. They want to spread their ideas to young kids.

This makes sense financially because the more people following their ideas, the more clicks they get online for ad revenue (Gawker, polygon, ars Technica, Rolling Stone etc.), the more sympathy they get through patreon, kickstarter, etc.(Anita, Wu, etc.), and the more political power they receives (see Mattress Girl meeting the senator for her lies).

The stereotypical 'right' have a culture of conning people with religion. Now the political 'left' have a culture of scamming people with 'social equality' lies like rape and wage myths.

songsofthewoods · 20時間前

I've never experienced any 'sexism' and when I was a child in the 1990s, it was other girls who bullied me for being 'nerdy' and preferring to talk about my Yugi-Oh card collection (please don't judge) instead of being interested in Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne. I found a community and acceptance with my fellow 'nerds' (all of whom who happened to be male). I was never questioned or doubted, and they were just glad to have a fellow friend that shared their interest.

I think I found a long lost sister! I had a huge binder for my cards, and I always kept 1 card w/ me at all times - the Change of Heart card.

It's the "Mean girls" mentality from these "culture critics" and their clique that spread the '-ism issue' into video games. They LOVE to be always the center of attention, so they make non-issues into HUGE TANTRUMS about... you guessed it! THEM

As for the media, the current market of the media is no longer in reporting FACTS / TRUTHS objectively without writer bias, but by writing the biggest Clickbait headline and article that could generate them money. And this practice isn't just in online publications, it's EVERYWHERE! So I'm not really surprised that these 'gaming journalists' actually shit on their target audience, since RAGE generates them more money than reporting on charity events, positive coverage on games OR factual reporting. In my opinion, there's a small amount of "insert issue -ism" in the whole world wide gamers/gaming industry but A LOT of it in in games journalism/blogger industry.

Damascene_2014 · 23時間前

Movies and music culture are too established and powerful for them and the barrier to entry is much higher. Even on something like a bottom tier Sundance indy the professionalism and working with a real team required is going to be much higher than firing up Twine, crapping out some hyperlinks and calling yourself a game dev.

I had once voiced these opinions to someone who identifies with social justice, and said I honestly haven't experienced the alleged 'rampant sexism' - he dismissed what I said with: "You are just lucky."

Everyone's got some experience with online trolls, and in their imagination they extrapolate that to all women in gaming regardless of what's actually going on in the real world.

A lot of it is beta men projecting in my opinion, ones that don't actually have a lot of experience with what actual women go through and are sexist themselves imagining they need to always fight for a woman's defense. It's precisely because gaming has such a large percentage of weaker men that want to escape from their lives that they think they can fix them with benevolent sexism and white knighting and trashing games. I think there are 10 white knights for every 1 feminist in this situation.

My wife of ten years basically had the road paved for her in red carpet and gold in MMOs and counterstrike from my personal experience.

I don't understand why the media and 'culture critics' are so attached to attacking videogames, asides the pre-existing negative stereotypes about gamers that are easy to exploit, and 'authorities' in gaming are more likely to kowtow.

That's it, they are just low on the social status totem pole themselves and have to attack something to feel superior. I can't imagine anything considered lower than a gamer besides a games blogger at this point. I mean homeless people and murderers and pro wrestling fans maybe. /s

primalchaos · 23時間前

Short answer: Money and easy ground floor access. The press and the business is still very amateur; and the indie scene was a perfect target. Meanwhile, games are making more money than movies and the major players are risk averse - the perfect targets for blackmailing and intimidation by what is effectively a protection scheme. Give us money, support our little think tanks, we won't call you sexist and evil.

TV and movies have already had their fight and everyone is way more exposed to them at every age and income level. Video games are still in their infancy, so its easy to scare people about their 'potential effects' when the 'bad effects' of movies have consistently never materialized.

But in the end, it's about money. It's about getting the easy bucks for just complaining. And it's about easy clickbait that these cultural critics give to the lazy glorified bloggers so they can all pay their two grand rent in San Francisco without really working a day in their life.

Or so they thought. Given how the game journo industry is going... I hear Burger King is hiring.

LeMoineFou · 21時間前

The SJWs are bullies at heart. But they're not strong. They're not cool. They're not popular. They're not powerful. They're not rich.

So they need to find somebody "lower" on the totem pole than they are. They thought that was gamers. They assumed (wrongly) that gamers are all males, white, nerds, that we live in our parents basements, that we can't get dates or have families, and that we will roll over at the first sign of aggression. They thought gamers were an easy target.

What the SJWs didn't realise is those stereotypes might have been true of gamers 30 years ago (although they probably weren't). But these days gamers are incredibly diverse. Young, old, male, female, fit, thin, black, white, purple, green, ... gamers don't care what you look like or what you believe, so long as you play the game. The only people the gamers don't like are posers and braggarts, unless the bragging is justified by having immense skill.

So gamers didn't accept the narrative the SJWs pushed, because we knew it was false. We pushed back. We will keep pushing back until these asshole SJWs are run out of town. Games are for gamers, all kinds of gamers, and we intend to keep it that way.

cheat-master30 · 22時間前

Because gaming is less mainstream than TV or movies or literature. And the people who tend to be interested in games have a unfair reputation as 'nerds' or 'outsiders' (something shared with the fandoms for comic books, manga/anime outside of Japan, tabletop games, pro wrestling etc).

Add how less people know much about video games than other media, or how the medium has a bad reputation with certain groups in general (see the whole 'New Media is Evil' stuff on TV Tropes) and the gaming world was seen as an easy target by these bullies.

They couldn't do this against movies or TV (or at least gain traction from it) because the reputation of the medium and those who are involved in it and the mainstream appeal meant people saw them as the kooks they actually are. They can only operate when the medium and its fan has a 'bad' reputation with parts of the mainstream, hence why their other targets have been the likes of skepticism/atheism and tabletop gaming.

I also suspect (and this is probably going to cause a bit of trouble in the future) that fear may have a certain amount to do with it. There are many other groups and interests and things out there that these critics could go after who make any form of media look like a bunch of cute teddy bears by comparison. Unfortunately, these groups tend to resolve problems with their critics through violence, which scares off the culture critics and causes them to find 'easy' targets.

FrinkleMcDoo · 23時間前

I know you said "Explain like I'm Five" but there isn't much of a simple answer. At least, not one that gets to the root of the matter.

The short answer? Gamers fought back against Outrage Culture. They didn't like that at all.

SJWs exist, and want to feed their own ego by engaging in moral crusades against the evils of the world. They typically are radical feminists and into identity politics and other postmodern ideas.
SJWs create Outrage Culture. They actively seek things to be offended by, so that they can bully the target into submission and feel superior about it.
SJWs see nerd culture as an easy target, because nerds are seen as weak and easy to influence. Many nerds are already liberal and believe in some of the same platforms as them.
Comic books falls to the SJWs and is currently embroiled in Identity Politics.
SJWs target Atheists and attempt to break off and create Atheism+ (as in, plus feminism and social justice). It fails to catch on.
SJWs target games next. Gamers however are very resistant to their demands. They point out that what the SJWs are doing is no different than what Jack Thompson tried to do to games.
SJWs double down and call gamers misogynists and racists for not caving into their demands. Gamers still refuse to back down. They've dealt with slander already for decades by the mainstream media.
SJWs declare gamers dead. Gamers respond with Gamergate.

That's it in a nutshell, as best as I can put it.

DangerouslyGoneAlone · 23時間前

It's all about the clickbait. Incendiary topics get a lot of clicks and Anita Scamkeesian vs Video Games was pretty much guaranteed to generate a flame war in every article for a couple years. Gamers internet more than most people so they're good targets for clickbait outrage.

bugme143 · 22時間前

Simply put, because the rest of society still sees gamers as the buck-toothed nerd with the bowl haircut and taped beer-bottle glasses, and they unconsciously take the role of the jock bully shoving us into the locker.

asdfasdf21231 · 22時間前

Ask yourself, why don't they go after hip-hop? There are a lot of hip hop songs that have misogynistic stuff. Nobody goes after them. Why? Because hip hop artists would laugh in their faces. They aren't PC and they don't give a fuck. Same thing happened with the Protein World Ads. Guess what happened? They didn't buckle, and it backfired on the SJWs. When protein world ran the same ad in NYC, not a peep from them. They do it because gamers are an easy target and don't push back. These people are just looking for something to be upset by and looking for easy targets.

AspsVeryDangerous · 22時間前

The theory goes that, in games journalism at least, all this is a result of them trying to stay relevant in an age of user-generated content and YouTube video game personalities.

There's a lot of sour grapes there because of an ever-dwindling and ever-demanding audience, and very little money involved. Being jaded with the medium itself doesn't help (one thing clear from reading Polygon or anything by today's Leigh Alexander is the absolute disdain for games and gaming).

Grasping at straws they latched onto the 'games have to be art now/need to grow up' narrative in a botched attempt to stay relevant. This came to a head with GamerGate, as most of these publications boiled over into 'fuck it, we hate you, you're all sexist/racist monsters' propelling them rapidly to their own imminent deaths.

And here we are.

Seruun · 20時間前

Holy crap that got much longer then I intended, I am sorry.

I blame the GJPs, they used their connections to certain "critics" like Sarkeesian to set up a distraction from their own buddy-buddy crownyism and corrution that came to light following the so-called Zoe Posts (a series of blog posts where a journo admits to have given postive coverage for his ex-GF Zoe Quinns "game").

The SJWs were very eager to help since all they saw was Quinn being the damsel in distress, assualt by those vicious mysoginerd. Ethics in journalism? What's that? The great indie outlets, Kotaku, RPS, Polygon and some more simultaneously published articles condemning gamers, declaring people who identify as such dead and thus should no longer be catered to. Instead they shilled the projects of their indy friends (and only those who they like, not studios like the "Fine Young Capitalists").

I don't know how you feel about being patronized and talked down to by a bunch of corrupt people who ideally should be your consumer advocates, but many didn't take it well. Large sites like IGN are pratically advertisement outlets these days hence gamers turned to smaller sites to get unbiased news who went on to betray the trust bestowed onto them.

For what, you may ask. It can't be money since they hurt their own bottom line with that move, so I guess it is controll and influence over the gaming industry in general and the indie scene in particular. They want to be the sole arbitrator on what is a good game and what should be shamed into oblivion. Thing is their idea of a good game and a gamer's idea are radiacally different.

You have look at the mindset of these people. On one hand there are elitists who want for games to become something akin to high art where they can drink "fizzy water and talk philippine politics" (no really, this is paraphrased from an actual recent Rock Band preview. On the other hand you have the social justice crowd who sees games a means for re-educating the masses. "Games" like Depression Quest were made with this goal in mind. The common denominator of both is the so-called hipster demographic.

On a more general note, the Zoe posts aren't that extraordinary and rather tame (a lot of accusations and hurt feelings of a betrayed man), they were just the latest and most blatant example of corruption (e.g. a few years ago we had "doritos gate", google it, it is really funny or not, depending how you feel on humanity in general). In a way the Zoe posts were the proverbial straw that broke the camals back.

This "pattern" of SJWs invading a subculture through blanket accusations and advertising them selves as the solution to the problem they created isn't new. There was "elevator gate", a case where female conference speaker at an atheist/sceptic conference felt harassed because a man asked her (in an elevator, hence the name) to share a drink with him. It went similar with GG, the sceptic movement (already a thorn in intersectional feminism's site, because sceptics are very good at detecting and ridiculing bullshit) came under fire as a womanhating men's club. Here is the thing about sceptics, the only common denominator is their scepticism otherwise they are not a unified group and forming one is anti-thetical to the core tenants of scepticsm (question everything, especially ideologies that demand that you fall into lock-step).

Unlike GG they lacked publication outlets to boost their voice so the SJW crowd never got very far and as I said, sceptics and atheists don't do "listen and believe" they do "evidence and reason". With GG however, the non-gamers are far too likely to just swallow what the press coughs up since they see the common stereotype of basement dwelling losers reaffirmed. This is why it worked better here then on the sceptics. Sceptics are seen as intellectuals, gamers are seen as nerdy (white) losers who are incapable of normal social interaction (when they are just introverts).

Amigobear · 23時間前

there's a lot of reason, i can't say which one is true for all. But the way I see it most people who consider themselves gaming journalist do it because they want to validate gaming as a respectable medium, making themselves respectable. For other, they believe what they're doing is a progressive cause.

ThriKr33n · 23時間前

I think about this phrase a lot: "Those that can, do. Those that can't, teach english." Or nowadays, they whine and bitch about it on Twitter or blogs and pretend to be journalists.

Fun tangent: friend's husband said there was a third line to that phrase "Those that can't do either, teach gym." :D

SigmaTheDJ · 23時間前

The video games industry is massive, so it's the perfect thing for leeches to attach themselves to.

Joss_Muex · 22時間前

To put forth a more venal answer, Money.

Video games are now the world's largest entertainment industry, and moreover are as vunerable as the rest of tech to media based bullying. The pliability of the gaming media to persuasion and dishonesty is also well ingrained. As such, the opportunity was wide open to shake down the industry as a whole and several groups have succeed in this with flying colors, Feminist Frequency being simply the most prominent example.

There are of course other issues, ranging from ever increasing tensions between journalists and gamers, to the rotten indie cliques, to the genuine desire of some to politicize the medium. But a core driver of this is probably money, as least as a kind of fuel. When it runs out, most of this stops almost instantly.

oldmanbees · 21時間前

Because they're jerks, and video games have always been an easy target. When I was a kid, the two things it was absolutely safe to give you shit about (even in front of teachers or other adults who should know better, but would shrug or laugh along) were video games and Dungeons & Dragons. I think the adults didn't intervene because they didn't understand those things, and were themselves made uncomfortable by that.

But kids take their cues from adults. If they say something asshole to you, like "Does that mean you worship Satan?" and look to the side to see how a present adults reacts, and the adult does nothing, the kids are going to do that more. Asshole kids used to get my phone number from the school directory and call my house all the time, impersonating friends of mine:

(nasal "nerd" voice): Hey Bees. Did you get the magic sword in Castlevania? (background giggles) I know where it is..." Me: "Ahuh. Right "Jason." Keep telling me more interesting things, person who is my friend Jason and is clearly not pretending to be him and doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about."

Well the asshole kids grew up and coasted through bullshit college majors and found easy, low-stakes jobs. And somehow, in 2015, you can get paid to be a jerk about video games and people who play them, while pretending that your ridiculous, soft, education, was worth all the money your parents spent on it.

ZanziJive · 20時間前

Hear of the "High School Never Ends" theory? The same people who bullied you for being a gamer back then are most likely the same people who want to demonize gamers today. They can't get away with straight up bullying for aggression's sake as adults, so they latch on to the moral high ground by calling gamers "racist, sexist freaks" and cherry-picking scenes from games and idiotic comments to justify their long-standing hatred of "gross gamers". Even after becoming a bigger deal than movies, it's a way to keep the gaming industry and their evil consumers in check.

But what about the gamers who were unpopular back in school that have popular blogs now? Surely they wouldn't throw their old community under the bus for the appeal of more cool kids that will invite them to all the cool parties. "Social Justice? Of course, that's a great cause. Those gamers are gross people, MSM is right, it's the winning narrative, and I've got ads to sell and parties to go to. "

Definining any large community with -isms is always a juicy story, and the easiest way in the Twitter world to earn retweets and brownie points is to denounce something that no rational being endorses anyway, and count on the lack of research from the general public to make you look like the "correct" person. Same shit, different target.

jbleargh · 19時間前

Your experience is not unique. That's the reason gamers were able to resist when lots of other parts of the society caved.

We know that we are not racists with sogge knees and being bullied because of nerdy tastes is also part of many lives around here.

The media is ignorant and arrogant... They believe in the old stereotypes and didn't know that we know how to use the internet to expose their incompetence.

The "cultural critics" are just narcissistic hipsters exploring "white guilt" for personal gain.

Macismyname · 19時間前

A non white women gamer on KiA? Guess it's time to drive you out of gaming. /s

Aurondarklord · 22時間前

Because ewwwww, nerds.

In less sarcastic terms, I really get the impression that there are some people who are deeply prejudiced against nerdy men, for whatever reason, they find us disgusting, and never seem to have outgrown high school clique rivalries, and the idea that we have a space of our own, let alone a space in which we have access to women (even virtual ones) drives them bonkers.

centrum5555 · 23時間前

i think it is a mix of different things.

first of all sports as well as movies are well known by the 'normies' so it is hard to spin a narrative. though as you so well said the narrative there would not even be spun that bad. but people are less likely to be outraged about something they are part of and as a whole approve it would reflect badly on themself.

secondly media has a vested intresst in putting gaming in a bad light, on the other hand the media themself profit from the movie and music industry so a rampant outrage there would be detremental for themself. and yes i bet you would find people to decry music and movie industry but without the media to direct them they are like blind sheep.

thridly creating outrage has been a lucrative business in the past. and well outrage that can be seen as rigtheous by the 'normies' is even better so lets decry games and the gamers.

and lastly until recently most people in the gaming world were too much absorbed in their games to actually pay much attention to it. well they still are probably.

also which games did you speedrun?

Inuma · 22時間前

Time sinks for games is large, it makes the most money and vultures would sink their teeth on a bunch of nerds with the idea that they can't fought back.

They underestimated the backlash...

plspirit · 22時間前

Because being a nerd has become trendy in the last few years, also money.

ShredThisAccount · 22時間前

There's also a component that, overall, gamers tend toward the liberal side of the political spectrum. As a liberal, when someone tells me that my behavior is creating a problem, I am willing to step back and consider the idea. 'Of course, I might be wrong' is actually a default mind set among more liberal and intelligent people, because we know enough to know we don't know everything.

So people like me entertained the idea, and by the time we had decided 'upon reasoned review, we are not a problem. the interweb social media vaguely news like substance industry had achieved a critical mass of stories calling gamers problematic, which skews the perception over the average netizen and the search results.

Sinistar_Lives · 21時間前

There are a lot of people writing about games right now who are doing so only because they couldnt cut it as critics of a more "mature" culture/artform (where journalists are actually required to adhere to standards) and are therefore very resentful of 'gamers' and feel they are somehow 'above us'

descartessss · 21時間前

Sarkeesian actually talked about other stuff, but nobody cared about her until she started talking about videogames with the key feature of claiming harassment. Videogames are widely hated from non gamers, it was like that 30 years ago, it still is today, this is not a news, nerds are the only group that is fine to bully, what is new is that now videogames are eating everything and all the other entertainments are significantly threatened, they can't wait to attack videogame industry. Since it's a male dominated field (90%) without an evident physical reason, like football, sexism seems the right weapon. Pay attention, most of the critics start saying how much money games makes... and this is the point.

But don't think that other media didn't experience similar stuff from weekend progressivists with no scientific backgrounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL3k5NtBUaI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7ER_q0B1-I

Gazareth · 21時間前

Video games are the biggest entertainment and art form.

Idiots like those of FemFreq both acknowledge this and also believe video games influence behaviour directly. So they preach this "altruistic" bullshit about improving the scene to be more progressive, and hence improve society directly. A bunch of people eat it up because being altruistic is good right? Wrong.

JymSorgee · 19時間前

Well it is not just video games. These 'culture critics' attack diverse people in diverse areas. Look at Matt Taylor or Tim Hunt. Actually these are really good examples because nobody wants to be called a sexist (except maybe sexists and even not most femini... sexists) when it is not true and so they apologize and try to get on with their lives. So why gaming is not why did they attack gamers (they attack their own regularly) but why did we react the way we did? Well first we are not really an easy target. We're kind of a dispersed network. Secondly we, much like yourself, have already experienced harassment and name-calling over our hobby so we are already less susceptible to such behavior. Finally we don't mind a fight. We kind of do that for fun anyway. We enjoy taking down targets and have a sense of camaraderie while doing so. Basically they decided to attack the people least likely to be affected by their methods and most likely to retaliate. TL;DR I talk to 5 year olds like they are miniature humans. They kind of appreciate it most of the time.

MEMES_IN_MY_ASSHOLE · 19時間前

It was super easy to set up shop in "video game journalism".

IIHotelYorba · 19時間前

They try this same shtick with everyone. Really, they're everywhere.

I don't know if videogame journalism really is easier to get into or even if it does that that plays such a big part. All I can tell you is that you can see people who think and talk this way in all realms of the entertainment industry. There may be less in non-media fields, but we are certainly in the heyday of them ALL airing their kooky beliefs.

Smadeofsmadestavern · 19時間前

Yugi-Oh card collection (please don't judge)

Don't you dare be ashamed, Yu-Gi-Oh cards were the shit, only problem was that I only ever knew a few people in my school who collected them to battle with. Where the hell were the people like you when I was in school?

RenegadeDoc · 18時間前

A lot of these morons are "culturally appropriating" geekdoms.

Many have little or no experience what it was like growing up "weird"

They confuse the self effacing banter we exchange as abuse, because our shared experiences allow us to get past the social barriers of "polite society" far more quickly than most.

The things I say to and about my gaming buddies would be unacceptable in "mixed company" but there is no hate there. I'm somewhat notorious for my angry rants as a raid leader, but I always try to be funny and outrageous rather than explicitly mean (I suggested a few days ago that I would elbow drop one of my raid team, flying all the way from the UK to turkey to do so. A fairly tame threat considering how inventive/disgusting I can be :P)

To an outsider this might sound like bullying or "discrimination" (the raider in question is a rather quiet and polite lady prone to being daft. I get on pretty well with her :P)

The sad reality is that those I "exclude" are those left out of the banter. SJW seem to demand special treatment on their own terms "because equality"

They wouldn't last 5 minutes as a regular dude amongst dudes.

Pyrhhus · 18時間前

It's those exact same girls that bullied you for not being "cool" as a kid- they realized people eventually get tired of their shallow shit and stop giving them the attention they crave. Well, it's them and their pathetic beta male orbiters. Pic very much related. http://i.imgur.com/GrDnv.jpg

call_it_pointless · 17時間前

There is also the issue that "woman doesn't expierence sexism" isn't news. Its like judging how good a game is by only visiting the support and bug reporting forum. You only see the one side so it seems obvious that its the only one that exists. That plus bias confirmation in group shinanigans and we have an out of control ideology.

ArjenDesign · 17時間前

Well said. Their entire narrative on the supposed "boys' club" is laughable, but it's profitable and you can easily label its opposition with whatever's convenient (sexist, racist, harassing, etc) to shut them down.

Wylanderuk · 23時間前

They thought we would be easy targets?

They can't see anybody having fun in a pool without pissing in it?

Or my personal fav...

They are bunch of cunts...

Dnile1000BC · 20時間前

SJWs target gamers and vidya because they think gamers are introverted sexually frustrated thus easily bullied. The games industry are worth a lot of money more than the movie industry. So they think they can get away with their usual tactics of heaping scorn on a "patriarchal" past time and force the diversity conversation on group of easily bullied people to make money.

They nearly succeeded.

Dogtopias · 20時間前

The way I see it is they attack any hobby or pass time that is seen socialy as male centric. Games, beer, porn, metal, comic books, board games, scifi books. The only stereotypical "Male" hobby that has escaped is probably sports perhaps it's too mainstream and engrained into the culture. It's only straight white dudes who are guilty of all this misogyny because the SJW mindset proclaims they are fair game.

Edit: Feel free to add to my list if I missed any.

___Rhand___ · 20時間前

I'll try to say something different than all the other people here.

I think another thing is that in gaming, cliques of doctrinaire identity-politicizing leftists (hereafter referred to as "SJWs") had assumed control of what they thought were the structures of power: the gaming media. I'm not too familiar with film, music, sports, etc, but from what I read of film and music critique, I don't see too much from SJWs.

I mean, I'm sure it's there and I've read some of it (hurpa hurpa "male gaze," durka durr "Sansa got fridged,") but outside of academia, I see few people taking it seriously. Fewer still among the throngs of moviegoers who don't give much of a crap about what the critics say. So I think it's fair to say that SJW influence in movies is much lower than it is in gaming.

In gaming, people (hypothetically) gave more weight to what reviewers said. They needed to, because a game costs six times as much as a movie ticket, and our money doesn't grow on trees (though from what I've heard about Tauriq Moosa and Brianna Wu, it certainly does for them).

So, gamers (hypothetically) placed a lot of stock in reviewers, a substantial portion of whom were SJWs. Because of this, the SJWs thought they had won, they could push their worldview on their readers, and we were just going through the motions at this point.

This is the hubris that let the SJWs come out with crap like "gamers are dead" and call their audience "obtuse shitslingers."

GamerGate is the SJWs finding out they were woefully wrong. Gamers don't care much for overtly politicized attacks from corrupt cliques of gaming journalists. Gamers no longer place as much stock in gaming media as they used to (livestreams and let's plays are a big reason why). From that perspective, it's no surprise that SJWs failed.

And to be honest, it's not going to get any better for the SJWs. The influence of written media gaming is waning day by day. I know it, you know, it, and Amazon Inc. knows it. Otherwise, they wouldn't have spent a $970mil on Twitch.

CodioBunny · 19時間前

Almost exact story of my life OP, except I'm white.

zagiel · 17時間前

Because gamers are known as "nerd" who got bullied

they thought it was easy target to bully, they never expected whats coming back to them

supergtt · 17時間前

Money. They see a big ass industry full of beta white knights and sjws eager to part with their money.

r1ob7 · 17時間前

Why not?

rebelwithacaue · 17時間前

SJWs run Hollywood and they're the gatekeepers in publishing. Vidya is the last hold out in their total take over of the culture.

For an example of how long this has been going on here's a proto-SJW from 1933 complaining about the violence in a Conan story: http://voxday.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/the-historical-pink-sfblue-sf-divide.html

TheCodexx · 17時間前

Because they can't conceive of the idea that they're wrong. That what they see as a problem isn't a problem for people actually in the culture, and they'll insert themselves in said culture so they can claim to be a part of it and "have experienced" it.

They're targeting everything. Gaming is just the most aggressive about laughing it off because you can't ban them from the store, prevent them from winning awards, etc. You can set speedrun records. You can call someone names on a server. You can produce mods. And at the end of the day, your status in the community is determined by quality of production and skill. It's determined by merit. SJWs hate this, because they excel in social environments where they can game the system and call for "handicaps" because of how oppressed they are. They rely on guilt. You can't do that in gaming because we're all equal in the virtual world. We all start on equal footing. Anyone with advantages got there with a time investment and probably building skill.

This is why I fight for gaming. Because of exactly what you said. When bullies picked on us for being nerds, we had each other. Now the nerds are trying to take that from us because "being nerdy is cool". But we're still the social rejects they hate. They used to tell people we ate our own boogers. Now they call us sexist. Anything to stigmatize us. But we've experienced it so much that we're immune.

Dwavenhobble · 17時間前

My best guess is it's trying to exploit a very specific timing and set of circumstances.

a group considered socially outcast being thrust into the mainstream and games appear on more shows and geek chic being in. All the established things of geekdom have become cool in some way. There's been the Comic book inspired films. The Lord of the Rings films. Gaming being started to be placed on the same level as other mediums at last in terms of the law. Even shows like the Big Bang Theory have made geekdom seem interesting and fun.
Lots of old media was finally dropping dead and a lack of new media from the normal sources lead people to look into geekdom for things to use. Traditionally in much of US media the scientist or educated person was either a bumbling idiot or villain or basic hinderance. Many things in US history etc had the Hero being the every man or the sports start (Long story behind this which relates to America trying to battle perceived class-ism). Much of geek media etc has educated people as the Heroes Dr Who, Dr Reid Richards (from the Fantastic four), Tony Stark, Bruce Banner etc etc. And in many pieces it pits the traditional heroes as the villains. E.g. The Hulk regularly fought the army and to give another example Bane often being shown as a brutish monster in Batman (though he is meant to have brains it seems rare he gets to show it)
Part of it may be resentment as with shows like The Big Bang Theory often the major butt of the jokes are the idiot Jocks. Yes it makes fun of geek culture too but generally any episode with a stereotyped jock has the jock coming off worst and the smart guys winning in the end somehow. So yes it's some people fighting against the culture change to perpetuate it.
Next the idea of the geek seeking acceptance from the now ex popular group was still considered a thing. People were trying to play on this to change people by claiming what they're doing is wrong and everyone else thinks and does things this way so you should too or you're excluding people by your actions. Essentially trying to make people feel bad for the way they act etc by trying to appeal to geeks sense of empathy. Geeks having been considered excluded before thus would want to never make anyone feel unwelcome.
Then there's the idea of games becoming "a true art" and people trying to fight for this with Anita presenting something that appeared to some to be an angle of legitimacy because of her having been in academia. The idea somehow that an academic cared for gaming causing some people to latch on and think Anita would make gaming a legitimate art faster somehow by her presence.
Then there's the rise of smartphone games and of course with the whole "Games are art" come those who wish to claim their half baked vomit is some great artistic expression. Gaming straddling the lines of games and story mediums meaning a piece of art in the medium of games should use both gameplay and narrative to some extent and well some people are good at stories but not so good at game mechanics. Hence the new wave claiming for inclusivity gaming should make games that aren't complex because it's so hard and exclusionary to new people.

TLDR version

Some people saw this as their shot to force changes they wanted onto a society and use the in thing to do it. Much of it revolves round playing on peoples empathy and in particular geekdoms desire to include people and not make people feel bad and left out. Hence some people have chosen gaming to try and get everything they want in a culture by trying to change it to fit their desires.

Oh and others are doing the above but for easy money by using and exploiting peoples Empathy.

Array71 · 16時間前

it was other girls who bullied me for being 'nerdy' and preferring to talk about my Yugi-Oh card collection (please don't judge)

We all had one, we aren't gonna judge that at all. :3

dannylew · 16時間前

The Video Gaming community is, in their eyes, low hanging fruit. That AND Movies and Music (and Books) have already been put through the ringer of outrage decades ago. The greater population now rolls their eyes at outrage pundits for freaking out over Books/Movies/Music because time has proven none of those things capable of destroying society.

We're part of the primary consumer demographic now across most media now, young working class adults with money to spend, we're only going to get older while the previous generation that drives the outrage against video games goes away and society will stop giving a fuck about gaming. I'm hopeful that once that happens we'll see more and more devs/indie devs reaching out to take actual risks and give us the Stanely Kubrick's and Gaspar Noé's of games.

ExplosionSanta · 16時間前

I can think of another fandom that spontaneously gets together and does charity stuff: Bikers.

Just like gamers, they're a boogeyman for the general public because the media loves to blow the actions of the 1% way out of proportion.

In reality, you see a hardass looking dude with motorcycle leathers on, chances are pretty good you're looking at the nicest bloke in the room.

ferrhis · 15時間前

It's classic yellow journalism brought to a new generation. Yay! I just re-watched a video of John C. Dvorak listening to Nilay Patel explain why gamergate is the worst thing ever. And Dvorak just kind of shrugged at the end and went like...and? Someone said mean things to you on the internet? What else is new? The only thing he found confusing was the level of press gamergate was getting.

And Patel conveniently omitted that piece of information. Because with gamergate mean things were said mainly to bloggers and professional victims who are already experts at writing sensationalist clickbait nonsense. So they just did what they do best and provided as much sensationalism and as little journalism as they needed to get clicks. And discredit those who wanted to stop them from spreading false information for a living.

Dashing_Snow · 15時間前

Because most of these people have horrible personalities and you need to at be at least semi tolerable to actually play with the fun people in games.

acathode · 15時間前

3 major reasons:

Gaming has become something that now have a major cultural impact, and there's now a ton of money involved in this industry. It's simply a very juicy target. SJWs are ideologues, and ideologues see culture primarily as a tool for spreading their ideology - all culture is propaganda in their eyes* - and propaganda is either for you (good), or against you (evil). Propaganda is also esp. efficient when it's aimed at young people - so any culture that young people consume is more or less automatically a target for both right-wing and left-wing ideologues wanting to make it into propaganda for their cause. Also, the more money, the easier it is to appropriate some for your cause...
Male dominated spaces are automatically seen as suspect by society in general, and doubly so by progressives and feminists who have a large influence over liberal media. Men doing stuff with mostly other men is not completely kosher - it's a "boy's club" and thus misogynistic, if there are no women in a place - esp. a place that have money and power - it must be because the evil menz are keeping the women out, and that must obviously be fixed...
The biggest and completely crucial reason: Because they can. Simply put, gaming is a territory where they have influence, because tech people lean left, because the tech press lean left, because mainstream media will echo their narrative, etc - their claims of misogyny, racism, sexism, etc. isn't going to be dismissed out of hand. The press and the companies will pay attention to them, and give them influence and money, and so on - and that makes the SJWs latch on and keep squeezing.

Other areas share the two first reasons with gaming but still aren't targets, because the SJWs don't get any traction in those communities whenever they throw out a feeler "controversies". Everyone, including the guys with money and media power, just laugh and dismisses them - then the SJWs retreat, they are after all bullies, and bullies don't like being alone in hostile territory.

Millenia0 · 14時間前

What you are is an actual gamer, the people who says gaming is sexist and so on, are "culture critics" When he said you were lucky you probably were, there are tons of trolls out there that goes for anything about you to get a rise from you. Sadly it seems that current generation is unable to ignore them.

Then again you're most likly internalizing your sexism/racism and you're only doing this to get bro-points or something similarly crazy.

ApplicableSongLyric · 14時間前

I had once voiced these opinions to someone who identifies with social justice, and said I honestly haven't experienced the alleged 'rampant sexism' - he dismissed what I said with: "You are just lucky."

Yup, I've gotten this from people online, too.

No, the reality is we're just not whiny, entitled, special-snowflake syndrome little cunts.

We get in there, get beat about, and if we want to excel or be superior at something, we keep getting in there until we are, 'else it was never that important to begin with.

RangerSix · 12時間前

Another couple things people seem to overlook in favor of the whole "Gamers are hateful, basement-dwelling fat white neckbearded dudebros" narrative:

Operation: Supply Drop - A charity (headed primarily by current and former military personnel) that raises funds - usually via periodic gaming marathons - to purchase and ship video-gaming gear (usually consoles and games) to troops serving overseas.
Warfighter Engaged - Not sure if they're a charity per se, but IIRC they either modify or custom-design game controllers for disabled veterans.
And, of course, the classic examples: Child's Play and Extra Lives (I'm sure everyone and his brother is familiar with them, though).

But, of course, none of these play well with the ever-popular narrative of hate, so they're all just quietly swept under the carpet...

poiumty · 9時間前

Look, Feminist Frequency started out as a channel to "critique" pop culture, most notably movies.

No one gave a shit. No one took her seriously, and she wasn't making much money out of it.

Then she set her sights towards gaming. BING! 160k $$$$$.

I don't doubt the reaction Anita got had something to do with all the recent series of events. Being a victim in most fields isn't profitable. Being a victim in gaming is.

As for why that is, I chalk it up to gamers being inherently defensive of their medium due to a lifetime of ridicule.

1Leonard · 7時間前

he dismissed what I said with: "You are just lucky."

Can't he see he is literally erasing a woman's voice.

Are all these people just projecting?

Tumdace · 2時間前

Because its always been easy to attack nerds and people who play video games. Alot of us are or were socially inept and very weird people, and its basically exactly like the bullying tactics used when we were in school.

The people who attack us for being "misogynistic" or for "harrassing" people are basically just bullying hypocrits.

wowww_ · 21時間前

Easy to co-opt.

They've never liked them, themselves (lots of bullys grow up, and are no less mature then they were in high school)

And there's a widespread image that nerds are losers sitting in their basement playing ultra violent games while munching on cheetoes.

I had once voiced these opinions to someone who identifies with social justice, and said I honestly haven't experienced the alleged 'rampant sexism' - he dismissed what I said with: "You are just lucky."

Have you ever tried to explain to a very religious person that the devil/etc doesn't exist everywhere? It's kind of like that.

ERYFKRAD · 18時間前

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