#GamerGate One Year Later

LifeThirdTier · 2日前

No mentioning Deepfreeze

Calls Polygon, Kotaku good

Pretends the outrage is unjustified

Poison the well fallacy when the well was poisoned by corrupt journos in the first place

In general, the piece replays the "It's a gigantic fucking mess, let me ignore all the evidence of collusion and corruption and make it about the wistleblowers" bull you usually hear. I'd didn't expect this lack of research from Kain.

Also Jason Schreier is the last person you'd want to call "the best journalist in this business", given he helped protect Fish from accusations from his former partner that he stole his work.. Which is probably illegal.

New707 · 2日前

"It’s far too often about getting people fired, about shutting down the opinions of those they disagree with,"

These are two separate things, Leigh, Patricia, Grayson, the whole lot need to be fired for their unrepentant unethical practices, NOT for holding opinions we don't like.

I have never seen Kain miss the mark by that much before. Never.

IMULTRAHARDCORE · 2日前

Even though I think Alexander’s approach was wrong, I found the backlash even more troubling. She’s allowed to state her opinion and we are allowed to disagree with it, and the same is true for writers sympathetic to #GamerGate. Calling for heads to roll over offense or opinion is dangerous.

Leigh Alexander is entitled to her opinion. The problem with "Gamers Are Dead" wasn't so much the opinions espoused as the fact they were all espoused at the same time by multiple publications. It was a media blitz brought on by the Game Journo Pro groupthink.

And sure, some sites like The Escapist have made moves toward transparency which is great and that site in particular is beloved by #GamerGate—but other sites, like Polygon, have done just as much to create transparency and openness, and because they’re perceived as SJW bastions they’re despised.

Erik I'm sorry but I think you have a deep misunderstanding of the situation here. It's Too Late for Polygon. We are never going back to Polygon or Kotaku. We want them bankrupt and gone. There is nothing they can do anymore to fix the situation. We appealed to the journalists, we appealed to the editors in chief, we appealed to their parent companies. They continued to attack us and indeed continue to this very day. I'm sorry Erik but this is total war and remember it was their choice to go down this route not ours. We only wanted to play video games.

And because #GamerGate is an amorphous, leaderless movement as concerned with SJWs as it is with ethics, there has never been a proper decision as to what exactly its grievances are, what precisely its ethics complaints may be.

Challenge Accepted: Interviewing a hashtag

http://deepfreeze.it/

http://spjairplay.com/

https://press.gamergate.me/dossier/

No. You're wrong. We have laid out the ethics complaints and our grievances with games journalists quite thoroughly and discussed it any time journalists bothered to take interest beyond the harassment narrative.

Stephen Totilo and Jason Schreier are two of the best video game reporters in the business, and have a deep pool of contacts and sources to draw on.

Totilo and Schreier are snakes. They do not belong in this industry. They belong somewhere like TMZ.

The one question I don’t see asked often enough by #GamerGate is on the matter of quality. What is valuable? What is useful to gamers? What—if anything—should be limited? If we burn the whole thing down and find ourselves with only dry news pieces and nothing resembling the current, often messy/flashy/hyped up game journalism we have now, will anyone be happy?

I have long said I'd rather see this entire industry, and yes that includes video games themselves, burned to the ground than let these SJWs, Cultural Critics, and indie douchebags have it. I will not see a thing I love so corrupted.

But #GamerGate takes a similarly negative approach to game journalism. It’s far too often about getting people fired, about shutting down the opinions of those they disagree with, instead of simply supporting and pushing for more voices they support.

https://wiki.gamergate.me/index.php?title=Rebuild_Initiative

https://wiki.gamergate.me/index.php/Support_List

Yeah...no. You're dead wrong again. Obviously you haven't bothered to pay attention for the entire year we've been around.

cakesphere · 2日前

Pretty disappointed by how far Kain misunderstands/misrepresents why we want so many prominent anti-GG voices fired.

It's not because they write critical shit we disagree with, it's because they have glaring, documented conflicts of interest that they downplay/hide when publishing hit or fluff pieces. Leigh Alexander has every right to be a drunken ass, that's between her and her employers. It becomes a problem for the public when she's (self-admittedly) pushed her friends without disclosure as part of her agenda.

Kain can write better than this. "6.5/10 breddy gud" -IGN

TheColourOfHeartache · 2日前

There's much I agree with and much I don't.

For example, when Erik is right to criticise groupthink - groupthink is bad and dangerous. However joining a group is the only way for the "little guy" to be heard.

I agree with him for saying we shouldn't call for Leigh to be fired, but I also think the boycotts were justified. When Erik says such things should be a last resort; gamergate was a last resort, nonsense like the Mass Effect 3 entitled gamers has been happening for years.

IdioticUsername · 2日前

That was hard to read just because of how far off base it was. What Leigh Alexander wrote with her Gamers Are dead article wasn't an opinion piece, it was an inflammatory piece designed to incite a reaction and that's exactly what she got, just not the way she intended.

He seems to consider the mountain of ethical breaches which SPJ justified to be nothing but conspiracy theories, while ignoring everything GG has actually accomplished. And why is he so dead set on the idea that we're just out to get everyone fired? Not once have I seen or heard someone in GG say "Let's get Blogger X" fired, people have moved to smaller publications and/or lost credibility for being terrible at their jobs and shitting on their audience but that's life. If you suck at your job you get demoted. From what I can tell the majority of peoples' positions seems to be this: "These people hate video games, hate the industry, and hate their audience so why don't they go do something they enjoy"

And finally, this annoyed me because I'm getting tired of seeing it (emphasis mine):

But since its inception, #GamerGate has missed the forest for the trees. It has been all about specific personalities within the industry—both game journalists and cultural critics like Anita Sarkeesian—and about specific, narrow examples rather than about how to create a better gaming press.

This came up at Airplay, it bothered me then, and Kain parrots it here. You're the journalists here, it's not up to us to tell you how to do your fucking job! We're not the ones who write for a living. I'm not a plumber but if you install a new fixture and water is squirting out of every joint I know you didn't do it right.

Limon_Lime · 2日前

This was poor coming from Erik Kain. I'm actually kinda surprised it wasn't a better article that doesn't come off as an anti-gg circlejerk.

Drop_ · 2日前

Still an idiot.

I don't understand. He is constantly attacked by aGG, and yet he always manages to write off GG for various reasons as the unreasonable side, while aGG is the side with "right" on its side but taking the absurd path.

Seriously what strides has polygon taken to be more transparent? They still do their bullshit clickbait journalism. They still can't write an article without a BLATANT ideological bias.

Additionally I think he has a fundamental misunderstanding of how gamergate got traction.

To many people, indie games presented a new form of gaming. Gaming that wasn't just relentlessly corporate, profit focused, PR spending focused games. It was just people making games for the love of games and making it big when discovered. It was assumed pure.

Phil Fish changed all that.

And then the revelations about Zoe Quinn brought the house down entirely. Sure, it may have not been a quid pro quo trading sex for review scores. But choosing to give your friends' (or illicit lovers') games publicity without disclosure was an ethical breach that was on literally no one's radar.

Everyone knew that big AAA games and publishers funded the games journalism industry. No one liked it. But there was little that could be done about it. I mean, it was long ago now that the guy was fired for his bad review of Kane and Lynch.

But the reason gamergate blew up is because people assumed indie games were different. They got away from the funded publicity and seemed to gain traction based purely on the merit of their games.

Turned out that was all wrong. Going forward, indie developers instead of blatantly throwing money around would use complex webs of patreon funding and old fashioned cronyism to get their game covered in the media. That wasn't an improvement, it was trading one evil for another.

And to me worst of all is going forward indie games more and more (at least in the media) began to focus on social justice values and so did their coverage.

At least with the corruption of AAA developers they weren't blatantly trying to sell ideology.

I feel like Erik fundamentally doesn't get it.

throwawayF845 · 2日前

Well, Mister Kain, people here seem to be disappointed with your musings about "conspiracy theories", for instance. People disagree with you quite a bit.

And yet, nobody is calling you unethical, nobody's calling for your head. Maybe because things don't work here the way you implied?

[deleted] · 2日前

You can't get upset every time someone doesn't say exactly what you want to say. I disagree with Erik, but this is his opinion piece and that's fine.

That said, this is why GG won't win by waiting for Superman to come solve game journalism's problems. Want to disrupt the market? Support alternative sites, video producers or become one yourself. Let the companies you like know where they should spend their dollars. Create competition.

Niche Gamer and TechRaptor and the like have had great starts but there needs to more and they need to be built under a banner of "we're doing games journalism our way" not "we will say what GG believes"

achesst · 2日前

I was willing to forgive most of the inaccuracies until he served up this line about games journalists:

We want to maintain good relationships with the industry and our readers.

No.

All the articles a year ago were very clearly about NOT maintaining a good relationship with their readers. They said their readers were dead, gross, terrible, worthless human beings who shouldn't be given the time of day if they were beaten and bleeding on the side of the road. They were about how their readers were worse than ISIS and mewling man-babies who needed to shut up and listen and believe everything given to them by the gregarious, right-thinking journalists, throwing out correct opinions to the unwashed masses like pearls before swine.

If, one year ago, games journalists had collectively said, "There are things about our industry that could be better, but we want to work with our readership to make it better instead of making up lies about them." Gamergate would not have gotten off the ground. There is no leeway for good-faith misunderstanding on this point.

Journalists took a stand against their readers, and their readers responded in kind. No attempt to maintain good relationships with their readers were made until it became clear that attacking and insulting and threatening and whining wouldn't work. That is why we're still talking about this today.

The_King_of_Pants · 2日前

Archive this shit.

If Erik is gonna continue with his non-factual, mushy moderate, bullshit, he's not getting any clicks from me.

This article is pure "drop the tag," redemption narrative, bullshit.

mnemosyne-0000 · 2日前

Archive links for this post:

archive.is: https://archive.is/f4jDj

I am Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. I remember so you don't have to.

Trilandian · 2日前

Why do people keep saying that GamerGate has to be about ethics in games journalism or SJW influence in the media?

It's like we keep saying: the two issues are interconnected.

etiolatezed · 2日前

"according to some" is perhaps my main issue with this piece.

According to some can be a very weak basis for a statement. Enough so, that it's not worth stating. The "according to some" factor of wimin hatred in regards to Gamergate comes form the very people (press) that Gamergate was questioning.

The question is do you think that's a legit statement by the press? Do you think gamergate is harassment and gamers harass, or do you think that harassment is a wider issue dealing with multiple factors, or do you think the harassment claims were smoke and mirrors?

If Kain answers that question, then I feel a one year review would come across far more clearly. Without it, the piece is stuck in the mud, because 'according to some' means nothing. It's a year later, we can't still be asking "is gamergate the devil?" We know people still think that. It's not an interesting question, and not worth writing an article from that point of view anymore. The interesting question is "Should they still think that?" or "Why I don't think that."

mattinthecrown · 2日前

Here's my argument for why the calls for people to be fired are acceptable: they never apologized. They never owned up and apologized. Why should anyone have any use for a dishonest journalist?

monsieur7 · 2日前

A whole lot of words not saying much of anything.

primalchaos · 2日前

He also just refuses to realize the issue isn't "female critics of games", it's that they are allowed to lie without opposition and get away with intellectual murder. You cannot criticize them. If Sarkeesian's lack of engagement was constantly pointed out; if her disingenious arguments were taken on consistently; if she was frankly not allowed to get away with shit, her career would be over.

Sarkeesian's entire little empire would collapse overnight if she was faced with a thimble of the opposition and vehemence we faced from the 'reputable' press. We can take the criticism - just dish it out equally. We can take it, and they can't.

HexezWork · 2日前

Good read my only complaint is we really aren't complaining about lack of disclosure when it comes to things like free airfare to an event, review copies, talking with the companies PR etc etc we want disclosure when the subject you are writing about has a personal connection to you it be a relationship or financial.

Most people here realize that a relationship has to exist between journalists and developers to get coverage of a game before its released but that relationship should be strictly business and not be a personal (ex: your roommate) and/or financial (ex: you support them on patreon).

There are levels of disclosure and honestly just disclose it if you are unsure but the biggest offenders will always be "this games success will directly benefit me in someway".

Edit: People downvoting the man is entitled to his opinion on certain subjects and from the outside he may not know how bad some people like Jason and/or Leigh can be ethics wise. Journalists being afraid of not being able to state their opinion in a clearly labelled opinion piece (Leigh should of been better at that but you know megaphone gonna megaphone) is a real danger.

KingdomThrowaways · 2日前

If this upsets people, just wait until Auerbach gets his out there.

brandonclyon · 2日前

I think some great points are raised in this article but at the same time feels a little too safe.

I think there is a growing element of reactionary mentality that should be curbed and is something gamergate has struggled with since the beginning. The analogy of missing the forest for the trees is spot on.

At the same time there you have "big" names in the industry that have been uncouth shitnuggets and deserve to be called out on their bullshit.

ineedanacct · 2日前

re: the initial Pirsig quote, I think it has more to do with the fact that no one is shouting that the sun WON'T rise tomorrow -- or if they are, they aren't doing anything about it.

If people who thought the sun actually wasn't going to rise started lobbying for emergency measures, you'd probably hear pro-sunrisers saying something.

Vestar5 · 1日前

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

Erik Kain in a nutshell. I don't have anything against him and even appreciate a lot of what he does. But he clearly values being centrist on every single issue (he states as much in the article) way past the point of reason.

mnemosyne-0000 · 1日前

Archive links for this discussion:

archive.is: https://archive.is/t0jHK

I am Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. I remember so you don't have to.

1	Don't be a dickwolf.
2	Posting personal information on anybody ("doxing") is not allowed.
3	Do not participate in bad faith.
4	Direct links to other posts on Reddit, including NP (No Participation) links, are not allowed.
5	Brigading, aggressive dogpiling, inciting witch hunts, or any call-to-arms posts against other users or subreddits is strictly prohibited.
6	Archive links where possible.
7	Make sure your information is sourced and verified.
8	No reposts.
9	No memes as OP.
10	Link shorteners will be approved only by moderator discretion.
11	Metareddit stuff unrelated to GamerGate, censorship, or major Reddit happenings don't go here.
12	Tag your posts appropriately (ex. [Drama], with the brackets) so they may be given the proper flair.

KiA Affiliates	KiA Friends
/r/KiAChatroom	/r/WikiInAction
/r/KiACirclejerk	/r/ShitGhaziSays
/r/NotYourShieldProject	/r/neogaming
/r/WerthamInAction	/r/GamesNews
/r/TorInAction	/r/SocialJusticeInAction
/r/TumblrInAction	/r/DeepFreeze

KotakuInAction

KiA Hub | ON-TOPIC KiA | CORE GG | KIA VOAT | GG MEETUPS | MORE LINKS

Welcome!

Current Happenings

What is GamerGate?

Our Mission

RULES

Mod Log

調停者