7 ms·

> considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago What?

madamelic 5y ago
Look up what sparked Gamergate. It was largely based in men getting mad about women calling games out for being misogynistic. I am sure some was valid criticism. I am not really a fan of "every game must be progressive", etc. but the fact men got mad that women dared criticize video games should say a lot about the state of the video game industry. Not only that, but also, for a long time, video games just weren't marketed to girls at all. All video games catered to males and were specifically targeted as such. It's mainly the Wii, Nintendo DS and Switch that were a big on-ramps for women into mainstream gaming. Even now, many men assume "female gamer == Candy Crush" or some other weird idea. Or joke that if you are a woman on a video game that you _must_ be a trap.
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  If I remember correctly, the gamergate controversy was about a female indie developer dating a male indie game journalist. I can imagine why that would make people search for conflicts of interests.
  - slg 5y ago
    This is like saying WWI was about the life of an Austrian royal. Yes, you might be technically right, but it grew so big and so many people were fighting for so many different reasons that the specific spark isn't that relevant.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Gamergate was a harassment campaign organized against women in gaming. It was organized by men who were assmad that a female game developer released a game with a mental health theme rather than the usual focus on skill and violence favored by men, to critical acclaim. Her dating and sexual history were brought into it because that is a common tactic used by men to undermine women and discredit their achievements. Once again -- men got mad because a woman dared to release a game that didn't cater to their expectations or desires. That's Gamergate in a nutshell.
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      For anyone wondering, there was plenty of harassment, doxxing, and a number of rape and death threats against Zoe Quinn entirely because people hated her short game Depression Quest for being "political" or "not a game", well before the term 'Gamergate' or any of the 'ethics in journalism' conspiracy nonsense even came into the picture.
      - bitwize 5y ago
        Sources for this, please?
        crooked-v 5y ago
        The citations section of the Wikipedia article has literally hundreds from various reputable sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy#References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy#Referenc...
        Tally 5y ago
        Except the wikipedia article itself is pretty much one the single most biased accounts of the Event.
  - madamelic 5y ago
    This is fascinating. I'll have to look into this more. From my brief understanding, there are multiple narratives of what "true" Gamergate is. I could very likely be wrong and have been misled about the core issue of Gamergate. Thanks for the kind correction!
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      The post you're responding to is just repeating the same 'just asking questions' crap that led to the harassment campaign in the first place. What actually happened is pretty well-documented: a woman developer made a short game about dealing with depression to which various people then responded with rape and death threats; her ex-boyfriend lied about her sleeping with a gaming journalist in exchange for good reviews (the only things said journalist ever wrote about her work was before they met); and thousands of people then jumped on that as a justification for further harassment, doxxing, and wild conspiracy theories that persist to this day.
      - username90 5y ago
        Is there any documentation why people harassed her that isn't just speculation? The gamer culture works just like twitter mobs, they attack things for almost no reason and do it hard, harassment and death threats etc. There is no big plan or conspiracy behind it, just thinking that maybe she slept with some reviewer to increase her score is enough to trigger the hate mob. With that said, I'm not saying it was justified. Gamers are biased against women, yes. Gamers overreact and harass people who don't deserve it, yes. But they don't just harass any woman who publishes games, there are thousands of women who do that and nobody cares. It requires a spark, just like a twitter mob, and they become relentless attacking the target. And of course, if you accuse them of misogyny here they start attacking you, since they didn't attack her due to misogyny, similarly how when a twitter mob attacks a man with little evidence they don't do it due to misandry, they just attack someone they think did something wrong.
        input_sh 5y ago
        Speculation? Her former boyfriend wrote a blog post detailing their relationship (and lying that she slept with a game journalist, something he later said had no evidence of), someone posted it on 4chan, they tried to spin it as "ethics in game journalism" discussion (which never made any sense since he never reviewed any of the games she worked on). That's all there is to it, and it's pretty well documented.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend claimed that she was dating a gaming journalist to get good reviews. She was dating that gaming journalist, but the only things he'd written about her work were from before they'd met. Despite that, an endless parade of assholes on the internet immediately used that to justify harassment, doxxing, rape and death threats, hacking of accounts, etc.
    - licebmi__at__ 5y ago
      The ex-boyfriend wrote a post about her infidelity. I have seen the claim that he constructed the story to maximize impact, but the fact that she cheated on him was not disputed. Also the other claim was that the positive coverage was made before they were dating, not before they met, you have to take their word that they were not involved earlier so that point is rightly controversial. My take is/was similar to David Pakman's: there's evidence of non ethical behavior in the videogame journalism and how the topic was handled, but so what? it's not really one of the greatest issues that plague mankind at this moment. With that in mind, I bear no doubt that the whole thing was astroturfed to culture war topic by right talking heads. But this is in my opinion mishandled on the left, as I dare to say most of the people following the event were not really involved in politics, and were fed a narrative by the misogynists and anti-sjw types.
  - input_sh 5y ago
    Nope. Gamergate was about an abusive former boyfriend of a female indie developer stepping waaaaaay out of line, exposing details of their relationship in a blog post, while also claiming she slept with a game journalist (and then later saying he had no evidence of that). That journalist briefly mentioned her work once (before she started dating that abusive boyfriend), so conflict of interest argument never made any sense, because... you know, he never actually wrote a review of any of her games. It then spiralled even more out of control, targetting even more female developers for even more bullshit reasons. Brianna Wu was the target because she mocked Gamergate. Felicia Day was doxxed just for saying she was scared to even mock Gamergate (knowing what happened to Wu). Anita Sarkeesian for daring to kickstart a YouTube series about how women are represented in video games. In other words, Gamergate was about absolutely nothing but misogyny.
- username90 5y ago
  > "female gamer == Candy Crush" It is mostly true though. Of course all genres has some women but they skew very heavily in that direction. Strategy games etc barely has any women at all, especially the more complicated ones. Instead they mostly play puzzle games, and more social games like mmorpgs or story based games like rpg's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Genre_preferences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Genre_pr...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - munk-a 5y ago
    I don't know what mmorpgs you've been playing but they hardly count as social games anymore. I used to play MUDs and those tended to be pretty evenly gender divided and all about that social aspect (at least the ones I played). MMORPGs today are closer to either the MOBA or an RTS with twitch based responses and tactical understanding being key to play at the top levels. I don't have a full knowledge of everything, but I can say with certainty that there are several women who can clean up in AoE2 - even with its top echelons being male dominated (and a relatively non-toxic community from what I've seen). I think that women tend to go unseen intentionally in a lot of video games, avoiding mic use if possible and masquerading as men to avoid sexual attention and abuse.
    - username90 5y ago
      My link contains a survey of 270 000 gamers on what kinds of games they play, I didn't base this on anecdotes.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Gamer gate was Zoe Quinn cheating on her boyfriend with game "journalists" in order to get marketing for her Depression Quest game. That is the core of it and NOBODY contests those facts. The rest of the misandrist narrative is just Quinn and said journalists grabbing on to the social justice zietgiest in an attempt to do damage control.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    > and NOBODY contests those facts Quinn's ex-boyfriend, who made the original claims, later explicitly said: > To be clear, if there was any conflict of interest between Zoe and Nathan regarding coverage of Depression Quest prior to April, I have no evidence to imply that it was sexual in nature. For further context, the only coverage the journalist in question made of Quinn's work was before they had met, and well before the April in question.
    - the_doctah 5y ago
      >For further context, the only coverage the journalist in question made of Quinn's work was before they had met, and well before the April in question. The article was published March 31st, and they started dating in early April. What's your definition of "Well before"?
- speeder 5y ago
  That wasn't what Gamergate was about at all. What started it was first Doritogate, and later the Zoey Quinn and Anna Anthropy Business (both cases of women getting lackluster or bad games reviewed just because they had some kind of relationship with the journalist, Zoey her boyfriend accused her of seducing the journalist, and Anna Anthropy was roomate of journalist that covered her games). The misoginy accusations came later, and only then the whole thing morphed into a culture war thing. Yes, threats happened, nasty stuff happened, but part of it was false flag too, for example Brazillian police arrested a Brazillian that was making death threats in the name of Gamergate, but also was making such threats in name of a ton of other random organizations, the guy just liked to see the world burn and was self-professed progressive.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    > The misoginy accusations came later The misogyny was the driving force from the start. The original 'Quinnspiracy', before it became 'Gamergate', was a harassment campaign organized around the blatantly false claim that Quinn had slept with a gaming journalist to get good reviews of her work (the only mention he ever made of her work was before they even met).
    - speeder 5y ago
      The guy that made the accusations was her former boyfriend, and seemly not a gamer. Around that time people were also upset with other journalists, the Quinnspiracy thing became just the straw that broke the camel back, and gamers weren't upset because she was female, they were upset because Kotaku kept making shitty articles.
      - crooked-v 5y ago
        > the Quinnspiracy thing became just the straw that broke the camel back The 'Quinnspiracy thing' was harassment and rape and death threats on blatantly false premises.
- ggsurvivor 5y ago
  Gamergate started when someone pointed out that some shit game got positive reviews from a game reviewer that was having sex with the game developer. Fake narrative right from the start.
- shadilay 5y ago
  Gamergate started with the 'Quinnspiracy Theory' video series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy#Notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy#Notes

Look up what sparked Gamergate. It was largely based in men getting mad about women calling games out for being misogynistic. I am sure some was valid criticism. I am not really a fan of "every game must be progressive", etc. but the fact men got mad that women dared criticize video games should say a lot about the state of the video game industry. Not only that, but also, for a long time, video games just weren't marketed to girls at all. All video games catered to males and were specifically targeted as such. It's mainly the Wii, Nintendo DS and Switch that were a big on-ramps for women into mainstream gaming. Even now, many men assume "female gamer == Candy Crush" or some other weird idea. Or joke that if you are a woman on a video game that you _must_ be a trap.

fxtentacle 5y ago
If I remember correctly, the gamergate controversy was about a female indie developer dating a male indie game journalist. I can imagine why that would make people search for conflicts of interests.
- slg 5y ago
  This is like saying WWI was about the life of an Austrian royal. Yes, you might be technically right, but it grew so big and so many people were fighting for so many different reasons that the specific spark isn't that relevant.
- bitwize 5y ago
  Gamergate was a harassment campaign organized against women in gaming. It was organized by men who were assmad that a female game developer released a game with a mental health theme rather than the usual focus on skill and violence favored by men, to critical acclaim. Her dating and sexual history were brought into it because that is a common tactic used by men to undermine women and discredit their achievements. Once again -- men got mad because a woman dared to release a game that didn't cater to their expectations or desires. That's Gamergate in a nutshell.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    For anyone wondering, there was plenty of harassment, doxxing, and a number of rape and death threats against Zoe Quinn entirely because people hated her short game Depression Quest for being "political" or "not a game", well before the term 'Gamergate' or any of the 'ethics in journalism' conspiracy nonsense even came into the picture.
    - bitwize 5y ago
      Sources for this, please?
      - crooked-v 5y ago
        The citations section of the Wikipedia article has literally hundreds from various reputable sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy#References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy#Referenc...
        Tally 5y ago
        Except the wikipedia article itself is pretty much one the single most biased accounts of the Event.
- madamelic 5y ago
  This is fascinating. I'll have to look into this more. From my brief understanding, there are multiple narratives of what "true" Gamergate is. I could very likely be wrong and have been misled about the core issue of Gamergate. Thanks for the kind correction!
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    The post you're responding to is just repeating the same 'just asking questions' crap that led to the harassment campaign in the first place. What actually happened is pretty well-documented: a woman developer made a short game about dealing with depression to which various people then responded with rape and death threats; her ex-boyfriend lied about her sleeping with a gaming journalist in exchange for good reviews (the only things said journalist ever wrote about her work was before they met); and thousands of people then jumped on that as a justification for further harassment, doxxing, and wild conspiracy theories that persist to this day.
    - username90 5y ago
      Is there any documentation why people harassed her that isn't just speculation? The gamer culture works just like twitter mobs, they attack things for almost no reason and do it hard, harassment and death threats etc. There is no big plan or conspiracy behind it, just thinking that maybe she slept with some reviewer to increase her score is enough to trigger the hate mob. With that said, I'm not saying it was justified. Gamers are biased against women, yes. Gamers overreact and harass people who don't deserve it, yes. But they don't just harass any woman who publishes games, there are thousands of women who do that and nobody cares. It requires a spark, just like a twitter mob, and they become relentless attacking the target. And of course, if you accuse them of misogyny here they start attacking you, since they didn't attack her due to misogyny, similarly how when a twitter mob attacks a man with little evidence they don't do it due to misandry, they just attack someone they think did something wrong.
      - input_sh 5y ago
        Speculation? Her former boyfriend wrote a blog post detailing their relationship (and lying that she slept with a game journalist, something he later said had no evidence of), someone posted it on 4chan, they tried to spin it as "ethics in game journalism" discussion (which never made any sense since he never reviewed any of the games she worked on). That's all there is to it, and it's pretty well documented.
- crooked-v 5y ago
  Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend claimed that she was dating a gaming journalist to get good reviews. She was dating that gaming journalist, but the only things he'd written about her work were from before they'd met. Despite that, an endless parade of assholes on the internet immediately used that to justify harassment, doxxing, rape and death threats, hacking of accounts, etc.
  - licebmi__at__ 5y ago
    The ex-boyfriend wrote a post about her infidelity. I have seen the claim that he constructed the story to maximize impact, but the fact that she cheated on him was not disputed. Also the other claim was that the positive coverage was made before they were dating, not before they met, you have to take their word that they were not involved earlier so that point is rightly controversial. My take is/was similar to David Pakman's: there's evidence of non ethical behavior in the videogame journalism and how the topic was handled, but so what? it's not really one of the greatest issues that plague mankind at this moment. With that in mind, I bear no doubt that the whole thing was astroturfed to culture war topic by right talking heads. But this is in my opinion mishandled on the left, as I dare to say most of the people following the event were not really involved in politics, and were fed a narrative by the misogynists and anti-sjw types.
- input_sh 5y ago
  Nope. Gamergate was about an abusive former boyfriend of a female indie developer stepping waaaaaay out of line, exposing details of their relationship in a blog post, while also claiming she slept with a game journalist (and then later saying he had no evidence of that). That journalist briefly mentioned her work once (before she started dating that abusive boyfriend), so conflict of interest argument never made any sense, because... you know, he never actually wrote a review of any of her games. It then spiralled even more out of control, targetting even more female developers for even more bullshit reasons. Brianna Wu was the target because she mocked Gamergate. Felicia Day was doxxed just for saying she was scared to even mock Gamergate (knowing what happened to Wu). Anita Sarkeesian for daring to kickstart a YouTube series about how women are represented in video games. In other words, Gamergate was about absolutely nothing but misogyny.
username90 5y ago
> "female gamer == Candy Crush" It is mostly true though. Of course all genres has some women but they skew very heavily in that direction. Strategy games etc barely has any women at all, especially the more complicated ones. Instead they mostly play puzzle games, and more social games like mmorpgs or story based games like rpg's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Genre_preferences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Genre_pr...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- munk-a 5y ago
  I don't know what mmorpgs you've been playing but they hardly count as social games anymore. I used to play MUDs and those tended to be pretty evenly gender divided and all about that social aspect (at least the ones I played). MMORPGs today are closer to either the MOBA or an RTS with twitch based responses and tactical understanding being key to play at the top levels. I don't have a full knowledge of everything, but I can say with certainty that there are several women who can clean up in AoE2 - even with its top echelons being male dominated (and a relatively non-toxic community from what I've seen). I think that women tend to go unseen intentionally in a lot of video games, avoiding mic use if possible and masquerading as men to avoid sexual attention and abuse.
  - username90 5y ago
    My link contains a survey of 270 000 gamers on what kinds of games they play, I didn't base this on anecdotes.
blacktriangle 5y ago
Gamer gate was Zoe Quinn cheating on her boyfriend with game "journalists" in order to get marketing for her Depression Quest game. That is the core of it and NOBODY contests those facts. The rest of the misandrist narrative is just Quinn and said journalists grabbing on to the social justice zietgiest in an attempt to do damage control.
- crooked-v 5y ago
  > and NOBODY contests those facts Quinn's ex-boyfriend, who made the original claims, later explicitly said: > To be clear, if there was any conflict of interest between Zoe and Nathan regarding coverage of Depression Quest prior to April, I have no evidence to imply that it was sexual in nature. For further context, the only coverage the journalist in question made of Quinn's work was before they had met, and well before the April in question.
  - the_doctah 5y ago
    >For further context, the only coverage the journalist in question made of Quinn's work was before they had met, and well before the April in question. The article was published March 31st, and they started dating in early April. What's your definition of "Well before"?
speeder 5y ago
That wasn't what Gamergate was about at all. What started it was first Doritogate, and later the Zoey Quinn and Anna Anthropy Business (both cases of women getting lackluster or bad games reviewed just because they had some kind of relationship with the journalist, Zoey her boyfriend accused her of seducing the journalist, and Anna Anthropy was roomate of journalist that covered her games). The misoginy accusations came later, and only then the whole thing morphed into a culture war thing. Yes, threats happened, nasty stuff happened, but part of it was false flag too, for example Brazillian police arrested a Brazillian that was making death threats in the name of Gamergate, but also was making such threats in name of a ton of other random organizations, the guy just liked to see the world burn and was self-professed progressive.
- crooked-v 5y ago
  > The misoginy accusations came later The misogyny was the driving force from the start. The original 'Quinnspiracy', before it became 'Gamergate', was a harassment campaign organized around the blatantly false claim that Quinn had slept with a gaming journalist to get good reviews of her work (the only mention he ever made of her work was before they even met).
  - speeder 5y ago
    The guy that made the accusations was her former boyfriend, and seemly not a gamer. Around that time people were also upset with other journalists, the Quinnspiracy thing became just the straw that broke the camel back, and gamers weren't upset because she was female, they were upset because Kotaku kept making shitty articles.
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      > the Quinnspiracy thing became just the straw that broke the camel back The 'Quinnspiracy thing' was harassment and rape and death threats on blatantly false premises.
ggsurvivor 5y ago
Gamergate started when someone pointed out that some shit game got positive reviews from a game reviewer that was having sex with the game developer. Fake narrative right from the start.
shadilay 5y ago
Gamergate started with the 'Quinnspiracy Theory' video series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy#Notes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy#Notes