Do you think the crew are scared of GamerGate

It's so crazy to me that the film and comic book industry have spoken out against the harrasment way more than any "mainstream" game writers have. Alex had a few Twitter outbursts when it first started, but he and everyone else has been almost completely silent on the matter.

I completely understand not wanting to be hacked, It just bums me out to see them be quiet when people they are(were) friends with are being assaulted every day. Jenn Frank's lack of support was especially depressing, since she was always a huge fan and defender of Giant Bomb.

I've messaged the guys regarding the Escapist piece and Brianna Wu's doxxing. I've appreciated Patrick and Alex's individual commentary, but that gives detractors the chance to dismiss their opinions as not being indicative of the whole site.

Guys, if you're reading, please come out against GamerGate. It is ruining lives.

This thing is still going on?

Jeff made some kind of post about harassment after people were harassing those who criticized GB's choices for the new hires (Dan & Jason). I don't know what a GG post would accomplish. Nobody within GG trusts Giant Bomb. They wouldn't change any minds. It's clear that Giant Bomb is already against harassment. It would just invite more negative comments on the GB crew while also re-igniting negative comments on the existing targets.

Going on two months now. Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian are still putting up with this shit, still working with the FBI to prosecute their abusers. Brianna Wu and her husband had to flee their home. And major gaming sites are terrifyingly silent.

I don't think I can possibly imagine what it's like to be in the position of Quinn or Wu, but I think if I was then I'd appreciate any website that was willing to stand up and directly against such a vile part of the gaming industry.

I don't blame them at all for staying away from the topic.

Yes, I do. This is the industry they report on, whose cultural issues they examine. This is absolutely something they should be writing about.

There was plenty of talk about it on Bombin the AM for several consecutive episodes a few weeks back.

I actually got off twitter because of it. Both sides were just so inflammatory. Glad it's mostly died down.

This isn't drama. Peoples lives are being threatened, their bodies targeted for rape. A few people have quit their careers rather than put up with this awful abuse. Zoe and Anita are working with the FBI to put their abusers in jail. This isn't some trivial Twitter spat. This is hurting people.

It just highlights what a group of losers do to women, verbally harass them for whatever reason, I'd guess most of them are virgins, or have some hate for women for whatever reason. I'm not so sure this is a story. There's a lot of forums that aren't modded where it's just a sea of verbal venom towards women. I'm sure no one showed up to Zoe's house, just some hiding behind some text or on a phone shit. Pussy behavior.

How do you properly shame these people? I imagine most of them smell of some rank odor and rock back and forth punching themselves in the head.

I think they are best to ignore it. Both sides are guilty of harassment and being awful. Nobody's hands are clean here.

While it might be a nice gesture, I don't think anything good would actually come out of it. They'd be dragged into the middle of it and nothing they could possibly write could change the situation.

I'm not saying they should pretend like it doesn't exist, but that should be something they do on a personal level. Giant Bomb the website does not need to be at the center. That's not Giant Bomb's purpose as a gaming website. It's not like we're talking about Kotaku or something. This kind of subject matter is completely outside of the realm of the site's normal subject matter. (Apart from the occasional Patrick article. And no surprise he's the one still talking about it.)

I don't really know what gamergate is, and there's so many *insert word*gates going on lately that I guess there's no wonder.

Whatever it is, hopefully it doesn't scare the crew.

@demoskinos: No. Only GamerGate has been consistently guilty of this. Don't buy into their false equivocation.

I've seen plenty of shitty things come from both sides. People like Leigh Alexander even on purpose stirring the pot or people just in general calling anyone who doesn't follow lock-step in participating in condemning GG assholes. Its a real either your with us or against us attitude coming from both sides.

I am happy they have stayed away from it.

All it would do is seperate a community, cause more drama, and solve nothing.

If the people getting harassed are working with the FBI then there is nothing else to be said or done. They are taking care of it and nothing anyone else says or does will help anything happen faster.

Edit: I would like to add that the mod team has done an amazing job. The fact you don't see scathing threads and out of control arguments is do to them. They keep the place civil and allow reasonable discussions to take place. They also prevent trolls and the like. To me that all speaks volume for what Giant bomb stands for.

"Coming out" against those actions is an utterly flaccid gesture, if not something that makes these problems worse. I obviously can't really imagine the specific motivations and wishes of the people committing the harassment and crimes, but I think it's safe to say that in general, what they want is a reaction. They already got it.

While it might not have made tons of editorials and blurbs on GB, the coverage of GamerGate and the related harassment has been huge on many other sites. The lens of the press have magnified the horrendous acts of a few anonymous jerks, and risen them to a level of reviled infamy. It's hard to think that the people perpetrating these crimes see that as a bad thing. And an article on GB lamenting them and supporting the victims only serves to legitimise those pathetic folks as actual hard-core bad-ass villains who are so powerful that every games media personality has to talk about them specifically.

I'm not saying, "Just don't feed the trolls". These crimes should never be ignored. But what helps isn't Jeff posting something saying, "People who are doing bad things should stop." It's those with that power doing what they can to help the victims directly. It could be us making sure the victims have the funds and access they need to fully prosecute the offenders. And it's all of us doing what we can at large to insure that when these kind of digital crimes are committed, the police have the training and resources to actually find those responsible.

Only actual actual action in real life can help this kind of shit. A blurb saying "in case you didn't know, we don't support terrorizing people" is as good as doing nothing at all.

Patrick and Alex already pretty explicitly had their say on a Bombin' in the AM a few weeks back, and the rest of them have made twitter comments to similar effect. What else do you want them to say? The internet hate machine isn't exactly something that can be stopped by shaming and condemnation.

They should talk about it in a video where they all wear sweaters and sit by a fire smoking pipes. Then we could finally start having a civil conversation.

Also, Patrick addressed stuff to this effect in his Q&A video a while back.

Seriously, they've said what they needed to on this.

You've clearly never followed CoD devs when they patch guns, have you? How about official MMO forums? How about forums on game sites (much like this one)? How about twitch? Professionalism is met with venom, threats, and police raids. You can be as professional as you want, but it has to be met with some decorum/common decency on the return.

Why is it our place to be involved in people's personal lives? Did not every game site discuss their policies and views afterwards? The internet's full of rabid crowds of assholes, and "heading it off" wasn't going to stop the hate train.

As has already been mentioned here, the staff has made their opinion on the issue known, repeatedly. There's nothing more to be said, nothing more they can say that would really accomplish anything positive, and any effort to give the whole issue more attention is far more likely to inflame tensions rather than deflate them. They've been very smart to do what they have, frankly.

Being out on wildland fires during this whole shitstorm has been great.

I'm just sittin here like, "aren't vidya gaymz great?" mhm mhm

@demoskinos:

Yes because one side is "fucking gamer culture is the worst" and the other is CONSTANT DEATH AND RAPE THREATS TO REAL, IDENTIFIABLE PEOPLE.

Anyone who has done ANY real research into the true nature of this horseshit "movement" and does subsequently not "follow lock step in condemning" it is garbage. Unequivocal trash.

It does not matter that some parts of the GamerGate thing may have some merit. It is inextricably tainted by this awful shit it started with, and continues to exhibit, already. Something legitimate can replace it, but this monster needs to die.

I only have a vague idea what all this is about. I did note an article about Anita S. being physically threatened, when I checked out another article favoring internet anonymity. It was suggested by Pat in a twitter on the main page. Internet anonymity itself was being viewed as necessary despite the blatant evil.

Anita hits me in a mixed way, but threats suck on another whole level. I hope there is an accounting..

@officermeatbeef: These types of posts just make you look like a leashed chihuahua barking at the clouds. There are no real people behind the death threats, it's Internet trolls trying to illicit a reaction. It's incredibly effective, it appears.

With all due respect, you can't possibly know if that's true and certainly the people on the receiving end likely don't want to take that chance to find out how serious they are.

Oh just stop.

This is the worst possible attitude. There are very real people behind those death threats.

Woah there, friend. Isn't this the kind of unwarranted vitriol that you're arguing... against? This attitude is precisely what folks in this thread are alluding to. Two obvious and innate points have been muddled by violent name calling. We can all agree that harassing anyone, anytime, whether on the internet or in person is wrong. We can also agree that, although I personally think it doesn't matter a great deal, maybe it would be good for folks who review and cover games to be more upfront about their personal attachments to those they're writing about.

When discussing those points somehow turns into calling other humans "unequivocal trash", it leads directly to this this fucked up situation we're in now.

For those who don't know, someone posted Briana Wu's personal information and made a very real threat to brutally rape and murder her and her family. Women have been targeted more and more often since #goobergate started. Besides an excuse for Adam Baldwin to continuing being a giant prick, harassing women (and men defending them) is really the main focus of the entire campaign. I really don't blame anyone for being scared to speak up though. The idea of being in the crosshairs of an organized hate mob that includes stalkers and actual white supremacists is fucking terrifying.

Here's what outspoken women deal with pretty often. Don't read it if you have a weak stomach: https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/520739878993420290

@joshwent: Pretty sure he's saying the movement is garbage, not the people. (though I don't have much issue saying the people doing the harassing are, in fact, unequivocal trash)

@octaslash: mods are probably going to delete your post with that picture, you're probably better off just linking to her Twitter.

I saw a graph floating around that showed how the "GamerGate" hashtag has thusfar been used well over a million times. Do you know how many people it takes to accomplish something like this? One person to look up info about someone, create a dummy twitter account, and make a few tweets. If anyone wanted to they could seriously just go look up Patrick's place, make an account, and threaten to bomb his apartment just to cause a ruckus. It takes one person to do that.

I realize it's an unsatisfying answer to say you can't judge bajillions of people based on one person who flings around serious threats, but it's the only logical response to have aside from immediate condemnation of the harassment going on. Which everyone at this point has done from here to Sunday.

When you have people admitting to creating dozens of accounts and tweeting for hours at a time it's not surprising how many dummy accounts there are.

But please continue to believe this isn't an astroturfed movement full of sock puppets so you can ignore all the harm and keep shouting "ETHICS"

@defaultprophet: I would never deny there are clearly thousands of deranged people in the middle of all this doing horrible stuff to innocent individuals like Brianna Wu. But not literally everyone ever involved in whatever "gamergate" actually is is a perpetrator of that. We accomplish nothing from generalized slander except pissing more people off.

It isn't one person. It is an organized campaign. A fucking mob of people. There are forums and chatrooms filled with people dedicated to destroying these people's lives. The whole #GamersGate thing was started by 4chan members for that purpose. And now it's been used over a million times. They have succeeded.

Why even jump into the fire? Wish they stayed out of the drug discussion in the last BC as well. Can we keep this site light and fun please.

No, I don't think it's fear.

I think their probable reason is try to stay out of it for business reasons. Unlike other new sites GB does have to rely on subscriber support, so they do have to be mindful of potentially upsetting their customers. Which means it's probably in their best business interests to try to stay apolitical even in obvious circumstances. I don't like it, but for the site's own being it might be the safest decision, that is the reality of having a consumer facing business.

Honestly it's too late now for just words. Whatever window they had to make a substantive difference with a frontpage story or a stated position is probably past. There needs to be action, what action I don't know but something substantive but the kind of action that needs to come from somebody bigger with more influence than Giantbomb.

This nonsense has gone on long enough and escalated enough that I'd say the console gamer community's reputation is tarred for who knows how long, maybe forever kind of like what happened to comic books in the 1950's which lingers with them to this day. The difference this time is that it's all self inflicted. Not many outside of this fandom is going to believe this industry is friendly to women after this summer without very visible major concrete reform and frankly why should they? I'm not sure many on the inside even do anymore.

Gamergate may have won some battles as they perceive them but they've lost the war for all of us.

I just hope the fervor dies soon before anyone else gets attacked ( I mean after what just happened UGH) and maybe actually physically hurt. It's getting scary how this continues to escalate.

You've got to be kidding me. I think I'm going to be sick.

Something to be mindful of though man, is that often people who suffer something like this don't want additional exposure for good reason. The press may be silent at her or the authorities' request. She did tweet it out, but it's hard to know who that tweet was intended for. It may have been really meant for her twitter followers not the general public. In a situation like that people don't always think 100% clearly and that just may have been the fastest, easiest way to let people she cares about know without thinking about who else would see it. And even then there's a big difference between tweeting to followers and having it published by a major outlet. The gaming news sites may want run it and not be able to get ahold of her to ask her permission to run the story. We just don't know right now and maybe never will.

I'm 100% sure this is not how she wants to be known either. I'm very sure she'd much rather be known for her craft and her game Revolution 60, than having attacks made on her signal boosted instead.

I wish I hadn't gone to look for myself about what was happening around this, already there's a conspiracy youtuber claiming she's faking it. That somehow makes this so much worse, as if the harassment itself wasn't bad enough...

I just hope she and her family are alright.

This shit doesn't actually have anything to do with games, so I don't think the gaming press has any obligation to cover it.

@milkman: Neither of us really know the validity of these threats. All I'll say is I highly doubt the capabilities and motivations of some nerd sending baseless threats through an anonymous twitter handle.

And those people are either ignorant of those carrying the flag of gamergate or intentionally ignoring them.

I'm just going to close this.

It's nothing but pure speculation to sit here and argue whether they are "scared" to talk about these issues or not. Most will say they aren't, some will say they are. It's also totally unfair to do this on the weekend when no one is around to respond to anything that is being said about them. The Giant Bomb staff have discussed these issues a lot, both on and off the site, and if they have something else to say about it then they will.

If you are still that concerned about a particular staff member's stance on any of the issues discussed in this topic, you should contact them directly for a response.

Have a great weekend everybody!