6 ms·

Yeah, I've heard about Gamergate in a couple of wildly different contexts. What's the deal with it?

by htns 12y ago

defen 12y ago
The extreme nutshell version is that a female indie game developer supposedly slept with a male video game journalist, and this supposedly let to favorable coverage for her game that would not have happened otherwise. The surface phenomenon is that a lot of people united under the banner of #gamergate to protest this breach of journalistic ethics. The dark side is that it seems like it's really just a bunch of people who want to see someone's life ruined, and they are wildly overreacting. I think the underlying phenomenon is similar to what happened to Brendan Eich, even though the ostensible cause and the people involved are completely different.
- knowtheory 12y ago
  Those are the stated reasons. It's worth noting no such review was ever written for Zoe Quinn's game. GamerGate has now doxxed and threatened a number of women in the gaming world (developers, critics, actresses) and Phil Fish the creator of Fez. They publicly organize to drive advertisers away from publications which disagree with them or call Gamergate out as misogynistic or threatening.
  - towaway5098 12y ago
    There's the Intel vice president who told me via email that GamerGate was "doing great work" and that he was "sick of slander and self-loathing from the press". He was talking about male journalists who do misandrist feminists' work for them. "I am pressing that team, it's not mine, but I am exerting influence when I can, to stop spending money with people who hate themselves and hate our clients," he added by phone later. http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/23/Gawker-dishonest-fascists-of-GamerGate-could-cost-us-millions http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/23/Gawker-... Intels own words. Are you saying they're misogynists or threatening because they agree with GamerGate? Besides it's the media that pushing away their advertisers, not just gamergate. They turned on their advertisers after them wanting to distance themselves from pro-bullying, sexist & racist articles/messages.
  - defen 12y ago
    Right, that's why I said "supposedly".
    - knowtheory 12y ago
      Yes, but saying "supposedly" is leaving the door open. The door is not open. No such thing ever happened.
      - defen 12y ago
        If you ask Google to define "supposedly" it says: "according to what is generally assumed or believed (often used to indicate that the speaker doubts the truth of the statement)." I hate these sort of semantic arguments. In case my sentence was not clear, I don't support the things that have been done to people under the guise of "Gamergate", I don't think she slept with anyone (nor do I care nor see why it is relevant), I don't think Kotaku gave the game good press because of the "alleged" romantic relationship, I honestly I don't give a shit about any of it, and I feel like I lost "the game" by even attempting to casually engage with this dumb fucking topic in any way.
        knowtheory 12y ago
        Hey man, i'm not criticizing you. You're making a good point. I want to make that point even stronger. It's not semantics in the sense that we're quibbling over the definition of words. Your point can be even more definitive. Gamergaters are claiming something that is not true. It doesn't matter if Gamergaters believe it to be true. It's not. <3
  - gohrt 12y ago
    The thing that confuses me (as a non-"Gamer" netizen) is that I am constantly bombarded with the "meta' arguing and hand-wringing about "GamerGate" on HN etc, but have yet to see anything actually from the core activity of the "movement" or whatever.
    - ObviousScience 12y ago
      That's because it's largely a tempest in a teacup happening in a smaller corner of online culture, but various people who overlap between the two are trying to play up its importance for various political reasons.
    - rtpg 12y ago
      Intel pulled advertising from Gamasutra under pressure from these people, some women independent game developers have "ragequit"(read: harassed beyond belief so did the only logical thing) from twitter and the like. It's violent if you follow the independent games scene These are also the same group of people who forced Phil Fish off the internet, basically.
      - ANTSANTS 12y ago
        Intel pulled advertising from Gamasutra because they directly insulted a customer group that is very important to their brand. Intel didn't cave under pressure, they simply acted rationally to a media outlet committing brand suicide. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_to_be_your_audience_Gamers_are_over.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_t... Phil Fish forced himself off the internet by being a contemptible jackass with an ego to rival that of Kanye West who fights with his coworkers, publicly shat on an aspiring Japanese game dev during a Q&A panel that asked him a polite question regarding his thoughts on their country's games, says that gamers are "the worst fucking people," tells people to "suck his dick, choke on it" then claims to be a feminist without a hint of irony, completely and utterly lacks self awareness, and just generally can't go a fucking day without throwing a tantrum on twitter. EDIT: Oh neat, my other post in this thread, a collection of links from an opposing perspective, was flagkilled. Way to flag/downvote for disagreement, redd-I mean Hacker News.
- towaway5098 12y ago
  Don't think anyone understands a long-running complex topic by giving it a passing glance. http://techraptor.net/content/understanding-pro-anti-gamergate http://techraptor.net/content/understanding-pro-anti-gamerga...
- hackuser 12y ago
  The essential issue, omitted by the summary above, is the aggressive harassment of women and of those who speak out about this problem. Three women (that I know of) have left their homes, fearing for their safety. Many others have had their personal information, such as their addresses, published online. That is what many people object to. For example, the author of this article, http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/22/5926193/women-gaming-harassment http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/22/5926193/women-gaming-harass... ... was harassed and threatened to the point that she left her home: http://kotaku.com/another-woman-in-gaming-flees-home-following-death-thre-1645280338 http://kotaku.com/another-woman-in-gaming-flees-home-followi...
michaelbuckbee 12y ago
Good overview here: http://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844 http://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-a...
- Natsu 12y ago
  The closest I've seen to neutral coverage is this: http://www.popehat.com/2014/10/21/gamer-gate-three-stages-to-obit/ http://www.popehat.com/2014/10/21/gamer-gate-three-stages-to... I'm not going to claim it's anywhere particularly close to true neutral, however.
ijk 12y ago
An article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/14/the-only-guide-to-gamergate-you-will-ever-need-to-read/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/... A video (Folding Ideas S4E7): http://blip.tv/foldablehuman/s4e7-gamergate-7071206 http://blip.tv/foldablehuman/s4e7-gamergate-7071206
mindslight 12y ago
In 2037, this exact question will be quoted in a Supreme Appstore verdict on the illegality of tabphlets advocating dodging the interplanetary draft.
tzs 12y ago
Surprisingly, one of the best overviews I've seen was in Reason: http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/12/gamergate-part-i-sex-lies-and-gender-gam http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/12/gamergate-part-i-sex-l... Unlike most of the other references people tend to cite in answer to questions like yours, they don't have an obvious stake in the matter.
ANTSANTS 12y ago
The bias is pretty clear in this comment thread, so here are some links from the other side to balance things out a bit: GameJournoPros is a private mailing list of numerous influential game press members, from which numerous examples of corruption and collusion to choose the messages that the game press reports have surfaced, reminiscent of and literally named by its creator after the JournoList (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList) scandal from 2010: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/17/Exposed-the-secret-mailing-list-of-the-gaming-journalism-elite http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/17/Exposed... http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/21/GameJournoPros-we-reveal-every-journalist-on-the-list http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/21/GameJou... http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/18/The-emails-that-prove-video-games-journalism-must-be-reformed http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/18/The-ema... http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/10/GameJournoPros-joking-about-paid-reviews-and-mocking-Phil-Fish http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/10/GameJou... Yanier "Niero" Gonzalez, owner of popular gaming news site Destructoid, colluded with GameJournoPros to blacklist a writer from the game journalism industry after a scandal: http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/10/gamergate-destructoid-corruption-and-ruined-careers/ http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/10/gamergate-destructo... Clickbait sites and Youtube channels purposefully misrepresent games as sexist by abusing glitches and emergent behavior like ragdoll physics to portray the games in a negative light, purely to fan the flames of controversy for the ad impressions: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/ngiujr http://www.twitlonger.com/show/ngiujr But it's all about sexism and hating women, right? A few bad apples aligned with the GamerGate movement spoil the whole bunch, right? It's not like anti-GamerGate bloggers would advocate bullying and violence: http://gamergate.giz.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gawker-Bullying-1.jpg http://gamergate.giz.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gawker-B... http://gamergate.giz.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bring-back-bullying.jpg http://gamergate.giz.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bring-ba... ...welcome the branding of the word "douchebag" as a racial slur against white men ("the racial slur we've all been waiting for," you can't make this shit up): http://a.pomf.se/kblzcz.png http://a.pomf.se/kblzcz.png ...call gay GamerGate supporters "fucking traitor scum to their people... that deserve nothing better than burning in hell for all eternity": http://a.pomf.se/vrwobd.png http://a.pomf.se/vrwobd.png ...compare GamerGate to the ebola virus: https://twitter.com/fd1017/status/525512137234337793 https://twitter.com/fd1017/status/525512137234337793 ...say that advertisers like Intel that pulled support over the controversy are "run by craven idiots... pusillanimous morons." http://unvis.it/gawker.com/how-we-got-rolled-by-the-dishonest-fascists-of-gamergat-1649496579 http://unvis.it/gawker.com/how-we-got-rolled-by-the-dishones... ...while using tactics like unjustified (and probably illegal) DMCA takedown notices to censor controversy: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s4nmr1/ http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s4nmr1/

Yeah, I've heard about Gamergate in a couple of wildly different contexts. What's the deal with it?

by htns 12y ago

Yeah, I've heard about Gamergate in a couple of wildly different contexts. What's the deal with it?

defen 12y ago

The extreme nutshell version is that a female indie game developer supposedly slept with a male video game journalist, and this supposedly let to favorable coverage for her game that would not have happened otherwise. The surface phenomenon is that a lot of people united under the banner of #gamergate to protest this breach of journalistic ethics. The dark side is that it seems like it's really just a bunch of people who want to see someone's life ruined, and they are wildly overreacting. I think the underlying phenomenon is similar to what happened to Brendan Eich, even though the ostensible cause and the people involved are completely different.

knowtheory 12y ago
Those are the stated reasons. It's worth noting no such review was ever written for Zoe Quinn's game. GamerGate has now doxxed and threatened a number of women in the gaming world (developers, critics, actresses) and Phil Fish the creator of Fez. They publicly organize to drive advertisers away from publications which disagree with them or call Gamergate out as misogynistic or threatening.
- towaway5098 12y ago
  There's the Intel vice president who told me via email that GamerGate was "doing great work" and that he was "sick of slander and self-loathing from the press". He was talking about male journalists who do misandrist feminists' work for them. "I am pressing that team, it's not mine, but I am exerting influence when I can, to stop spending money with people who hate themselves and hate our clients," he added by phone later. http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/23/Gawker-dishonest-fascists-of-GamerGate-could-cost-us-millions http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/23/Gawker-... Intels own words. Are you saying they're misogynists or threatening because they agree with GamerGate? Besides it's the media that pushing away their advertisers, not just gamergate. They turned on their advertisers after them wanting to distance themselves from pro-bullying, sexist & racist articles/messages.
- defen 12y ago
  Right, that's why I said "supposedly".
  - knowtheory 12y ago
    Yes, but saying "supposedly" is leaving the door open. The door is not open. No such thing ever happened.
    - defen 12y ago
      If you ask Google to define "supposedly" it says: "according to what is generally assumed or believed (often used to indicate that the speaker doubts the truth of the statement)." I hate these sort of semantic arguments. In case my sentence was not clear, I don't support the things that have been done to people under the guise of "Gamergate", I don't think she slept with anyone (nor do I care nor see why it is relevant), I don't think Kotaku gave the game good press because of the "alleged" romantic relationship, I honestly I don't give a shit about any of it, and I feel like I lost "the game" by even attempting to casually engage with this dumb fucking topic in any way.
      - knowtheory 12y ago
        Hey man, i'm not criticizing you. You're making a good point. I want to make that point even stronger. It's not semantics in the sense that we're quibbling over the definition of words. Your point can be even more definitive. Gamergaters are claiming something that is not true. It doesn't matter if Gamergaters believe it to be true. It's not. <3
- gohrt 12y ago
  The thing that confuses me (as a non-"Gamer" netizen) is that I am constantly bombarded with the "meta' arguing and hand-wringing about "GamerGate" on HN etc, but have yet to see anything actually from the core activity of the "movement" or whatever.
  - ObviousScience 12y ago
    That's because it's largely a tempest in a teacup happening in a smaller corner of online culture, but various people who overlap between the two are trying to play up its importance for various political reasons.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    Intel pulled advertising from Gamasutra under pressure from these people, some women independent game developers have "ragequit"(read: harassed beyond belief so did the only logical thing) from twitter and the like. It's violent if you follow the independent games scene These are also the same group of people who forced Phil Fish off the internet, basically.
    - ANTSANTS 12y ago
      Intel pulled advertising from Gamasutra because they directly insulted a customer group that is very important to their brand. Intel didn't cave under pressure, they simply acted rationally to a media outlet committing brand suicide. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_to_be_your_audience_Gamers_are_over.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_t... Phil Fish forced himself off the internet by being a contemptible jackass with an ego to rival that of Kanye West who fights with his coworkers, publicly shat on an aspiring Japanese game dev during a Q&A panel that asked him a polite question regarding his thoughts on their country's games, says that gamers are "the worst fucking people," tells people to "suck his dick, choke on it" then claims to be a feminist without a hint of irony, completely and utterly lacks self awareness, and just generally can't go a fucking day without throwing a tantrum on twitter. EDIT: Oh neat, my other post in this thread, a collection of links from an opposing perspective, was flagkilled. Way to flag/downvote for disagreement, redd-I mean Hacker News.
towaway5098 12y ago
Don't think anyone understands a long-running complex topic by giving it a passing glance. http://techraptor.net/content/understanding-pro-anti-gamergate http://techraptor.net/content/understanding-pro-anti-gamerga...
hackuser 12y ago
The essential issue, omitted by the summary above, is the aggressive harassment of women and of those who speak out about this problem. Three women (that I know of) have left their homes, fearing for their safety. Many others have had their personal information, such as their addresses, published online. That is what many people object to. For example, the author of this article, http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/22/5926193/women-gaming-harassment http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/22/5926193/women-gaming-harass... ... was harassed and threatened to the point that she left her home: http://kotaku.com/another-woman-in-gaming-flees-home-following-death-thre-1645280338 http://kotaku.com/another-woman-in-gaming-flees-home-followi...

michaelbuckbee 12y ago

Good overview here: http://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844 http://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-a...

Natsu 12y ago
The closest I've seen to neutral coverage is this: http://www.popehat.com/2014/10/21/gamer-gate-three-stages-to-obit/ http://www.popehat.com/2014/10/21/gamer-gate-three-stages-to... I'm not going to claim it's anywhere particularly close to true neutral, however.

ijk 12y ago

An article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/14/the-only-guide-to-gamergate-you-will-ever-need-to-read/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/... A video (Folding Ideas S4E7): http://blip.tv/foldablehuman/s4e7-gamergate-7071206 http://blip.tv/foldablehuman/s4e7-gamergate-7071206

mindslight 12y ago

In 2037, this exact question will be quoted in a Supreme Appstore verdict on the illegality of tabphlets advocating dodging the interplanetary draft.

tzs 12y ago

Surprisingly, one of the best overviews I've seen was in Reason: http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/12/gamergate-part-i-sex-lies-and-gender-gam http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/12/gamergate-part-i-sex-l... Unlike most of the other references people tend to cite in answer to questions like yours, they don't have an obvious stake in the matter.

ANTSANTS 12y ago

The bias is pretty clear in this comment thread, so here are some links from the other side to balance things out a bit: GameJournoPros is a private mailing list of numerous influential game press members, from which numerous examples of corruption and collusion to choose the messages that the game press reports have surfaced, reminiscent of and literally named by its creator after the JournoList (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList) scandal from 2010: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/17/Exposed-the-secret-mailing-list-of-the-gaming-journalism-elite http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/17/Exposed... http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/21/GameJournoPros-we-reveal-every-journalist-on-the-list http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/21/GameJou... http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/18/The-emails-that-prove-video-games-journalism-must-be-reformed http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/18/The-ema... http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/10/GameJournoPros-joking-about-paid-reviews-and-mocking-Phil-Fish http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/10/GameJou... Yanier "Niero" Gonzalez, owner of popular gaming news site Destructoid, colluded with GameJournoPros to blacklist a writer from the game journalism industry after a scandal: http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/10/gamergate-destructoid-corruption-and-ruined-careers/ http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/10/gamergate-destructo... Clickbait sites and Youtube channels purposefully misrepresent games as sexist by abusing glitches and emergent behavior like ragdoll physics to portray the games in a negative light, purely to fan the flames of controversy for the ad impressions: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/ngiujr http://www.twitlonger.com/show/ngiujr But it's all about sexism and hating women, right? A few bad apples aligned with the GamerGate movement spoil the whole bunch, right? It's not like anti-GamerGate bloggers would advocate bullying and violence: http://gamergate.giz.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gawker-Bullying-1.jpg http://gamergate.giz.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gawker-B... http://gamergate.giz.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bring-back-bullying.jpg http://gamergate.giz.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bring-ba... ...welcome the branding of the word "douchebag" as a racial slur against white men ("the racial slur we've all been waiting for," you can't make this shit up): http://a.pomf.se/kblzcz.png http://a.pomf.se/kblzcz.png ...call gay GamerGate supporters "fucking traitor scum to their people... that deserve nothing better than burning in hell for all eternity": http://a.pomf.se/vrwobd.png http://a.pomf.se/vrwobd.png ...compare GamerGate to the ebola virus: https://twitter.com/fd1017/status/525512137234337793 https://twitter.com/fd1017/status/525512137234337793 ...say that advertisers like Intel that pulled support over the controversy are "run by craven idiots... pusillanimous morons." http://unvis.it/gawker.com/how-we-got-rolled-by-the-dishonest-fascists-of-gamergat-1649496579 http://unvis.it/gawker.com/how-we-got-rolled-by-the-dishones... ...while using tactics like unjustified (and probably illegal) DMCA takedown notices to censor controversy: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s4nmr1/ http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s4nmr1/