Grantland Popculture Podcasts Discuss Gamergate Kerfuffle

Hey ya'll,

Grantland's pop culture podcasts Girls in Hoodies and Do You like Prince Movies covered Gamergate yesterday. The Girls in Hoodies podcast did a really good job of covering what is going on with gamergate and how it started. They did a great job exploring how it feels to be a woman covering games right now. They also talk a lot about where the industry might be heading from a cultural perspective. I honestly didn't think the whole gamergate thing was big enough to get covered on Grantland, but I guess things have gone far enough in the last few weeks that even an ESPN affiliate felt the need to cover the issue. These podcasts are pop culture-centric so be prepared to hear cultural commentary and analysis if you give any of them a listen. The Do You Like Prince Movies podcast only briefly touches on the gamergate stuff, but they do tie it in to the cultural zeitgeist of internet privacy failures in an interesting way. Both podcasts tie the gamergate stuff in with the recent leak of celebrity nude photos and the ensuing chaos therein; they also do a good job of showing an outsider's perspective on what is happening with gamergate.

So you know, the Girls in Hoodies podcast is a podcast hosted primarily by some of Grantland's female pop culture critics and they usually cover the pop culture topics of the moment. The Do You Like Prince Movies podcast is ordinarily a movie specific pop culture podcast hosted by Grantland's movie critics, one of whom is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

You might want to check them out if you have any interest in these topics. I listen to Both podcasts regularly and they are great on a weekly basis.

@thatpinguino: Grantland for some time also did game reviews/essays, too AFAIK and there are video gaming-centric articles that have popped up there from time to time. I don't actually listen to the Girls with Hoodies, I just listen to the Jalen Rose Report and the BS Report from time to time, just their sports-centric stuff.

The whole thing sucks. The more I see it the more I just feel bummed out. For such a small vocal minority to highjack the whole gaming community is so awful. Hopefully talking about it leads to more awareness of the issues and more importantly leads to arrests. These people need to go to jail.

@mikey87144: I hope that US law enforcement will catch up with the internet sometime soon because the attack vectors that hackers/ trolls use are pretty well worn at this point and they very rarely get caught. Hopefully police cyber-crimes units will start becoming the norm.

@gaspower: Yeah the BS report and the sports stuff were my original draws as well, but I found some of the pop culture podcasts cover some movies and shows I like and over time I grew to enjoy them as well. I especially like Do you Like Prince Movies since the two main guys are really experienced movie/ pop culture critics with a deep knowledge of movie history and context. I hear more original and deep takes on pop culture from those guys than just about anywhere else. The Girls in Hoodies podcast is great for a more female perspective and for coverage of shows and stuff that I usually would not pay attention to. Both are really worth a listen.

As for Grantland's game coverage, I really miss it. Their focus on well-written pieces of cultural criticism really synchronized with what I like and what I feel is missing from a lot of main-stream gaming sites.

@thatpinguino: They caught the guys who were responsible for bringing down PSN in 2011 and the ones that hacked a bunch of networks recently.

@mikey87144: Yes they tend to catch the big fish who take down corporate sites, but the ringleaders of harassment and doxing campaigns don't seem to get caught. Now I'm not sure if that is because what they are doing isn't a crime or if they are just too low level to go after, but man harassing people on the internet seems to be easy and consequence free.

@thatpinguino: But it shouldn't be though. Surely some of these people have accounts that aren't throw away and can be tracked to a real individual. Make an example of those people publicly by pressing charges and throwing the book at them hard. Harassment is a very real crime. Then it will scare away the vast majority of people perpetrating the worse shit. Especially if twitter made a setting where people with new or throw away accounts couldn't contact you. Get rid of the people threatening bodily harm and then you are just left with civil people are regular old assholes. Which sure, they aren't pleasant either but...this is the internet.

People are putting the onus on the greater gaming population to deal with these people, or to bare responsibility for the actions of these jerks or whatever. Bullshit. We have law enforcement for a reason. Bust these assholes.

@giantlizardking: Yep I hope that starts happening soon. Though harassment campaigns are not as potentially significant as massive identity theft and personal information leaks, they are very visible and less punished. Honestly I think it would only take a few people serving jail time to spook some of the perpetrators here since they are not particularly sophisticated in covering their tracks.

Yes. And the worst part is every dumb thing this hateful minority does reflects upon people who play video games as a whole.

I don't always like defaulting to jail sentences as a means of punishing crimes but in this case it would be well deserved and making such an example of some of the aggressors would most likely have a significant effect in reducing the likelihood of these kinds of incidents.

It also makes me disappointed that prominent members of the game industry aren't doing more to publicly stick up for those being harassed.

@cmblasko: I don't think jail time is even that far out of the question for death threats and personal information theft. Alternatively, I wish there was some way to issue an internet restraining order or something.

I'm not surprised that more people aren't sticking their necks out considering how many ancillary people have been caught in the blow-back. I wish this site just published the stuff Alex and Patrick are saying on twitter. Those two are always trying to use twitter to try to stop this kind of stuff and it would be nice for the site to acknowledge that beyond the twitter scroll. I think we are two weeks past the "ignore it and it will go away" phase.

I think a big factor that the Girls in Hoodies podcast touched on is that this internet fight is being waged on twitter: the absolute worst place for rational discussion ever. I mean the features of the service only allows enough room for tiny, unnuanced statements or long statements spread out over walls of posts. It is great for attacks, but terrible for discussion so you get a huge breakdown of dialog. Not to mention interrupting a discussion between two people on twitter is as simple as tweeting multiple times in a row to make the original discussion impossible to follow. This is a real case of twitter's form aiding in its unintended function as a harassment tool.

One reason this is happening on twitter is because the sites that it's about, and many other, censor the discussion heavily and/or prevent that discussion entirely. (did you know that even on 4chan's /v/, there are mods who delete the threads about it repeatedly, after the mod community agreed not to?) People tried to raise these issues other places and were sent packing, so I guess they ended up where they were allowed to speak. I agree, Twitter is awful.

And I don't think you'll see Alex or Patrick raise these issues in an actual article. They certainly should, if they want to put such professional clout as they have behind their opinion. Although I am not sure if Giant Bomb would ever publish an article that said "If you disagree with me, stop giving us money and pageviews". It would certainly be interesting...

@sweeneytodd: I think forums are only slightly better though. You can really have a dialog in a forum thread for so long before you start getting people posting without actually reading the whole thread (or anything at all). While I think the GB crew posting something would help on this site, the overarching problem will really only be solved when people stop seeing "trolls" and "social justice warriors" (I think I threw up a little bit in my mouth just typing those terms) and start seeing other humans that matter. People that are keeping the gamergate thing going need to see that they are not saving a dying industry. Their opposition needs to understand that, as silly as it seems, the term "gamer" seems to mean a whole lot to some people and attacking that term and those who like it is counter-productive. Then maybe we can all focus on excoriating the opportunists that are hacking and harassing in the midst of this kerfuffle (I'm so glad that that is an accepted term now!). Actually if we could take on the harassers and hackers first, that would be ideal.

Also i think the number of people who would actually leave GB because the editors took an anti-harassment stance would be quite small. I mean the site didn't crumble the last time they issued a letter from the editor, and I think it helped with this community at least.

I never want gate affixed to anything, ever again. I'm sure the entire world will oblige for my personal comfort.

@alistercat: Trust me, I hate every time I see a [controversy name here]-gate, but it works really well as a short hand. For some reason mainstream media coverage just loves to afix *gate to things and once people learn that name it sticks. I think it is because the term makes whatever controversy you are talking about seem way more important while also conveying that it is a controversy.

@sweeneytodd: I wish I knew what the issue is? As it involved someone's personal life I didn't read any article on it, (I live by the philosophy of Do not Do Unto Others as You Would have them Not Do Unto To You so as I don't want people looking into my personal life I grant them the same respect) but it seems to be more from the little that's bled through my filter.

Literally called gamergate. Fuck this world.

@mikey87144: You can listen to the Girls in Hoodies podcast to get caught up with an outsider's perspective, without much sorted shit. Skip to around minute 18 for the video game stuff. They talk more about the general twitter and harassment stuff than the personal details.

Zoe's largely irrelevant to the entire thing, it was when almost every site in existence closed ranks around the potential corruption and conflict of interest, and her PR manager organized the "Cuties Killing Video Games" meme that was covered in a half-dozen major gaming sites right around PAX, that people got their feet under themselves as far as trying to organize to speak out against corruption in the video gaming "journalism" industry. Hope this helps.

It's not about harassing anyone. Seriously. Some assholes on either side of the issue, or with no stake in it at all, have used it as an excuse to harass and incite, but guess what? Those assholes were going to be assholes about something before this, and they will after this, too.

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@sweeneytodd: I would say her getting harassed pretty incessantly for about a month now is very much relevant to the issue. In fact 90% of the mainstream coverage of this topic is about Zoe and Anita getting harassed. Actually I would say that the only part of this that is worth reporting at all is the harassment part because videogames coverage has always had its biases and its publisher-site behind the scenes relationships. Publishers have been attempting to control the message on games coverage for years now down to the console specific magazines and exclusive deals. Why this was the inflection point on corruption (whatever the heck that means in this case) is beyond me.

@cmblasko: If you want to respond to someone then please actually respond. People have a tendency to get defensive when you dismiss their argument rather than engage them in discussion. I don't want this thread to devolve into a shouting match.

Yeah it may not have been about harassment originally but that's sure as hell what it's about now. I have a very hard time believing this many people actually care that much about supposed corruption in video games.

To be fair, the fear of retaliation is very real - I wouldn't disparage anyone that is frankly, afraid for their own livelihood. Kudos to the people that did stand up, but I wouldn't look down on anyone that wishes to remain quiet because of fear.

That being said, the problem is also now much more real than what others can publically do - this very much needs to be something where proper authorities need to take notice and do something, and real change needs to happen.

Unfortunately, we also forget that this realm is very much a sub-cultural problem: a very passionate sub-culture, but still just a sub-culture at best. Yes, the problem affects culture on a grand scale worldwide, but the horrible things that have been happening are still just happening to people within a sub-culture.

Sigh. Thinking about this stuff is a total bummer. Group hug? Let's watch Ryan flush a pie down the toilet again.

It's not an article, but I think it's fairly obvious in the vaccum regardless, along side what has been mentioned in today's Bombin' the AM video, plus Patrick's recent Q&A video (which is sadly under premium wraps - it's very sobering and wonderfully said).

Is not just about the "corruption" of the gaming media , but the disdain they tend to show to dissenting opinions , how all of a sudden gamers became the bad guys because I dunno not bending to the opinions of those joournalist , about the now us vs them mentality of all sides etc. and unfortunately also about harrasment which is by no mean even slightly acceptable in any shape or form. It is much more important , reasons why outside the usual gaming media is cathing up upon the whole mess.

I stopped listening to the Girls in Hoodies podcast and reading any of their stuff when one of them wrote that awful article on Rockstar and how they only use women as eye candy. A ton of people tweeted them and mentioned in the comments all the strong female characters Rockstar has had over the years and whoever wrote it never even responded on twitter or on the podcast.

Edit: I guess I should mention I pretty much agree with TotalBiscuit on the last few weeks. Go listen to this thing he wrote and then recorded for your convenience. Lost a ton of respect for people on both sides of this "battle" especially the media and devs who act like they are better then the assholes on the other side, when in reality they are acting the same.

I am seriously missing something. Can somebody fill me in on the situation at hand?

@sackmanjones:

This is the best source that tries to really nail down whats going on lately on gaming on a unbiased way

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/04/gamergate-a-closer-look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/

@sackmanjones: Ignorance is bliss. Seriously you're better off not knowing.

If you really want to however there's this mostly neutral article that does a very good job of chronicling the events up to now.

Edit: Well then, seems me and @aetheldod had the same idea.

I think it reflects pretty poorly on this site that this thread has been (mostly, I guess) civil and this thread which is exactly the same except with a slightly different title devolved into nonsense pretty much immediately.

@pr1mus: I knew the beginnings of the issue at hand, just not the reason it exploded. Thanks for the article though, ignorance IS bliss and I'm sure I'll regret reading this but seems like something I wanna be in the know about.

The problem with "Anyone who finds this permissible..." is that I never quite know what the exact meaning or limitations of this is, which is probably why Twitter is considered a mature communication medium and is probably not helped by how there's a new this every 4 days or so. At a certain point I'm not sure if we're talking about the last thoughtcrime I was guilty of or some new one that just happened in the past few hours that everyone should feel responsible for.

Holy shit that Erik Kain Forbes piece is exactly what I would like some of the more journalist-like people in the media (Like Patrick) to do. Basically calling out the bullshit and the reason in both sides of the argument. I hope Patrick links it in the next Worth Reading but I won't be surprised if he doesn't.

Yeah, not really. Its useful to know but at the same time its shitty that I know. :(

To be honest I'm sort of surprised that people haven't invoked the "Atheism Plus" debacle from a couple years ago, which to me has a ton of parallels to how gaming communities have been slowly tearing themselves apart for the last year. Some feminists and other activists basically tried to turn atheism into a sociopolitical movement set with codes of conduct and all, and received a pretty strong backlash from people who basically felt like that was turning atheism into a dogma, as opposed to simply what it was; a lack of belief in a deity that united people from all walks of life.

It had all the hits from the last few weeks: A misogynistic hate spewing from trolls on social media, a reaction to harassment by basically saying "You're either with us or against us, fuckers! You want to be Atheism Plus or Atheism Less?", and then atheist communities spent the next year bitterly fighting over one group wanting to turn atheism into a dogmatic social movement, and another group wanting politics separated from the core unifier of what the group always was. The remnants of that schism remain, though the term itself is usually only used derisively these days. and large sections of those communities remain completely broken apart, mainly between popular YouTube atheists and the more academic types that inhabit the blogosphere. They seldom overlap as the latter tends to eschew direct confrontation because they've painted anyone who disagrees with them as bigots.

We can prevent that from happening to us if we insist on engaging each other and not generalizing. On maintaining intellectually honest dialogue between all parties. On keeping things more lighthearted. If we don't, I fear we're on the same trajectory, and if we are, we better fucking hunker down, because then it probably won't end anytime soon and it'll be pretty rough.

@aetheldod: I don't see how people being outraged at their friend being attacked and lashing out is hard to grasp. The people who are perpetrating these attacks are waving the "gamer" banner as hard as they can. So if there is criticism aimed at the group of attackers and the victims choose to use the word gamer to describe them (the way their attackers describe themselves) I think people should be mature enough to say, "they don't mean me." I don't see a dissenting argument that is getting shouted down or censored; I see passionate and occasionally overly broad counter-attacks (which is completely understandable given the circumstances) against attackers. And as far as the developers go, the people who are getting harassed are ostensibly getting attacked by their audience! How could they not lash out at the group that is attacking them.

@manhattan_project: That piece was a little extreme, but in fairness there have been 6 GTA games (counting Chinatown wars) and none of them have had a female protagonist. Women make up half of the population and have been entirely relegated to side parts, even if the writing is good and the portrayal is positive. Even in GTA 5, which had 3 protagonists, there was nary a playable woman. The female American experience is just as ripe for critique as the male and it is certainly worth exploring. They criticized the series, as critics do but that is no reason to discount all of their work.

@milkman: Isn't it amazing how the internet works some times?

@marokai: Then what would be the dividing belief? That the word gamer means something or that it is outdated? Because I don't see any reasonable people arguing for corruption or harassment or no more power fantasy games or all art games. It seems like the schism is different for every member of each side and each of them have their own personal straw-man that they are "against." These aren't two discernible sides as much as a bunch of sub-groups that are under the same banners for convenience's sake.

@thatpinguino said:

Well that's sort of the thing, I don't think most people have any "dividing" issue here. I think most people agree the harassment isn't okay. I think most people generally assume that other people view death and rape threats as a bad thing and don't go through each day asking for reconfirmation on that fact. I think most of us love video games and want to enjoy them together in idealistic harmony and all that.

I think there's been a divide between the enthusiast press and their readership for a number of reasons that's been there for a really long time, and that was the powder keg that helped cause all of this, but most of the bickering at this point seems to just be coming from weird political posturing and accusations that "gamers" are suspect, more bigoted, racist, sexist than the rest, based on anecdotal evidence. That was often the case during the "Atheism Plus" debacle. Suddenly people are shouting "war!" and digging trenches, and you're either with us or the terrorists. That makes people super frustrated who otherwise never entered the fray before because suddenly they're getting shelled for nothing they ever did wrong with a lot of the rhetoric. (And yes, many innocent people in the press have gotten lumped in with others, too, for nothing they did wrong.)

For example, I have no problem with Alex's tweet because it's worded specifically. "If you think this is acceptable, fuck off" is a lot more palatable than "if you call yourself a gamer, fuck off."

I just feel like there's a lot of weird political undertones to all of this I'm not really comfortable with being tied to the hobby that is in most respects apolitical. Patrick linked to a blog post from a female game designer a week ago or so that referred to the harassment as "right-wing video game extremism." A Kotaku writer linked to a blog post that referred to the word "gamer" as "selfish" and "conservative." I'm as left-wing as all get out and this still makes me raise an eyebrow. I'm not beating the "get your politics out of my games!" drum like some people are, I just think we should foster a free-thinking environment where we encourage direct discussion of beliefs instead of trench-digging and artillery shelling from afar and never trying to engage anyone you disagree with.

These debates and discussions are happening all over forums, and YouTube, outside of the games press' purview, which I fear will only accelerate their slide from relevance to the average consumer.

@manhattan_project: You should give him a follow. Despite being essentially just a glorified blogger Erik Kain does far more actual reporting than anyone i can think of in the traditional gaming media. He's a terrific writer that takes the time to actually research and understand a subject and shows far more respect for his readership than most.

@marokai: Yeah this certainly is captivating for all of the wrong reasons.

I suppose the part I'm not getting is that this started with harassment, which prompted some lashing out that was poorly worded. No one is really getting effected here in any tangible way other than the harassment victims. There is nothing that is being "gained" or "lost;" its not like the term gamer is going to be stricken from the vocabulary if the dev/journalist side "wins" (and I have no idea what a victory in this debate would even look like). But on the other side, it sure seems like the posturing from the "gamer" side is driving journalists and game devs out of the industry (which looks a hell of a lot like it was the point for some people). The gamer side has nothing to lose, companies will keep making games for them and writers will still have to appeal to them. That is unless this situation becomes a mess that paints gamers in a poor cultural light and frankly, with the way it is being handled, that is what is happening. This could have been a story about a small group of harassers attacking a female game dev and her friends, but apparently that flash point became a rallying cry.

Honestly, if people want to talk about corruption or voices being silenced where were the mobs when Jeff got fired? Where were the gamers when an actual problem was occurring? That was a time when this outrage would have been justified. But certainly not now.

I just feel like there's a lot of weird political undertones to all of this I'm not really comfortable with being tied to the hobby that is in most respects apolitical. Patrick linked to a blog post from a female game designer a week ago or so that referred to the harassment as "right-wing video game extremism." A Kotaku writer linked to a blog post that referred to the word "gamer" as "selfish" and "conservative." I'm as left-wing as all get out and this still makes me raise an eyebrow. I'm not beating the "get your politics out of my games!" drum like some people are, I just think we should foster a free-thinking environment where we encourage direct discussion of beliefs instead of trench-digging and artillery shelling from afar and never trying to engage anyone you disagree with.

I agree that the journalistic hot takes are adding fuel to the fire and the political interpretations here may be too broad. By using the term gamer they are catching more people in their criticism than they should. I never thought of myself as a gamer because I think that term is dumb, people aren't aren't readers or watchers for consuming movies and books, but ut seems like that term means something to a whole lot more people than I thought.

@thatpinguino: I've only really used the word "gamer" as shorthand for others' sake, but I've never personally identified with it myself all that much. Still, I understand where you're coming from. I think it sucks that this is when all of this stuff came to a head, but I can see why it's been a few years coming, by now. The Erik Kain article references Mass Effect 3 ("It's fine, you guys are just pissed you didn't get your happy ending! Why are you so entitled?"), SimCity ("It was designed this way, you guys don't know how games work."), DmC: Devil May Cry ("Whatever, it's just the unreasonable purists."), and other things as examples of how many in the games press have neglected to try and reach out to understand fan outcry, and instead reflexively dismissed it. That's built up a lot of frustration since, so much so that it's not entirely surprising that we are where we are now.

If we could just talk to each other more between critic and audience, I feel like so much could be nipped in the bud.

@marokai: And you did a better job of getting my point across without being an angry person like me self :/ you are a better duder than I

@marokai: this is a great point. I don't personally feel as strongly as many do about the ethics in the games press thing but if a large portion of your audience has a grievance you had better listen to them or don't count on them sticking around long. Ultimately this is why the YouTubers and twitch kids will inherit the earth: they actively involve their audience. Meanwhile Patrick tells people their concerns need to be side lined because some monsters you've never met or heard of have harassed somebody they are friends with. So honest discussion must be postponed because of the circumstances involving friends of yours in the industry? Jeez maybe those guys have a point after all...

I ask the same questions, and I think that's why Giantbomb has kept so silent on the matter. They've put in plenty of discussion on ethics and games journalism in the past (see their 50-min discussion of it on the podcast, or the frank discussion Jeff had post-GiantBomb buyout about why he was fired from Gamespot) when there was blatant corruption, like firing reviewers for giving bad scores or rewarding journalists for retweeting favorably about products. I think they're downright irritated the "corruption scandal" that blew up has its roots in games journalists defending a female developer against a smear campaign.

It'd be like if you spent years talking about police corruption, officers getting fired for whistleblowing while others abuse their power, trying to educate people about that, then you learn the one thing that gets people really riled up is accusations that a female officer slept her way to the top. And that the public's way of dealing with that is to harass the policemen that actually give a damn about that stuff until they leave the force.

I can see them screaming, "You're going after the wrong targets!" and silently thinking the corruption accusations are just cover for a nastier agenda. After all, if people really cared this much about corruption, where was the outrage against the other, nastier corruption accusations earlier?

@aetheldod: I'm having a bit of a hard time understanding your posts due to your grammar and spelling, but I'll try my best to respond.

This has been long time brewing ... how about when gaming journos ridiculed gamers for the whole Mass Effect 3 thing (which I might add we were right to do so because we called out the developer for their lies)

The ending to Mass Effect 3 was certainly bad, but I don't see consumers in other industries torpedoing metacritic and starting petitions when a new movie/book/show doesn't end how they would like. People are right to complain and criticize, but the extent of the reaction with disappointing games is staggering.

but then when the whole tomodachi friends happened they joined the ones complaining (which they didnt had to because Nintendo never made promises) , BECAUSE (and only apparently) of their social agenda not the help/protection/ or whatever you wish to call it of their readers

A critic has no responsibility to mimic the voice of their audience. If a critic sees something that they feel is wrong in a game or another piece of media it is their job to point that stuff out and hope their audience finds their work compelling. If journalists want to report on a story because they feel it is important then you have every right not to read them, but demanding that they stop reporting on what they feel deserves coverage because you don't agree is just naive of how journalism works.

Not only that journos cant fathom that they can be wrong and they have purposedly cover up their "friend" mistakes (you know the whole Fine Young thing ... oh wait no that didnt happened , sheesh )

No one really knows what happened there, but it certainly seems like Zoe and TFYC crew just had a disagreement that resulted in too much traffic flowing to their site and knocking it out for a bit. That is not an incident that needs covering up.

im sorry what is happening to Zoe is terrible but she is not any better than the ones she is against for. So on and so forth , and yes the gaming journos always attack games that are not made in their "social progession only " agenda , dont give me that bs that they dont want to destroy them or censor , while they are exaclty trying to do that. And aslo the gaming journos shoud´´ve also clarified that they dont mean all gamers but they do that and made all those bs articles. So please excuse me for getting upset about their bullcrap "on noe we are only defending our friend"

Here is where I vehemently disagree. I don't see random users getting singled out in public. I don't see random gamers getting their houses visited by games journalists. I don't see streams of puppet accounts raining attacks on gamers. I can see all of this coming at Zoe and many of the developers and journalists that are standing with her. These two sides are not alike in method or degree. And what makes you think gaming journalists have any power to censor which games come out and which don't? There are plenty of games that don't fit a liberal agenda coming out every year and guess what, they get covered. Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball gets coverage. Call of Duty get coverage. Manhunt gets coverage. You are empowering journalists with abilities they just don't have.

@marokai:

I've only really used the word "gamer" as shorthand for others' sake, but I've never personally identified with it myself all that much. Still, I understand where you're coming from. I think it sucks that this is when all of this stuff came to a head, but I can see why it's been a few years coming, by now. The Erik Kain article references Mass Effect 3 ("It's fine, you guys are just pissed you didn't get your happy ending! Why are you soentitled?"), SimCity ("It was designed this way, you guys don't know how games work."), DmC: Devil May Cry ("Whatever, it's just the unreasonable purists."), and other things as examples of how many in the games press have neglected to try and reach out to understand fan outcry, and instead reflexively dismissed it. That's built up a lot of frustration since, so much so that it's not entirely surprising that we are where we are now.

If we could just talk to each other more between critic and audience, I feel like so much could be nipped in the bud.

But each of those examples you provided were caused by a combination of publisher PR spin and journalist coverage. If Mass Effect didn't oversell the amount of personal control available in game then people's expectations wouldn't have been unrealistically high. And like I said before, I don't see mass boycotts getting threatened when a disappointing movie comes out, but that stuff is routine in games. SimCity was called out for being bad by most journalists I read. It seemed like the pr team at EA was condescending to gamers there. I agree that the tone should be adjusted, but I don't know what outreach people actually expect. Should journalists interview a fan of a series every time a new game comes out in that series for context? Should a journalist react/overreact in accordance with how their audience feels? You can certainly be less heavy-handed, but I don't know if that really matters. It seems like people are taking their game related disappointment and redirecting that disappointment at journalists who aren't as outraged as the audience feels they should be.

@manhattan_project: At the end of the article Molly Lambert says specifically that her beef is with the lack of a playable protagonist.

Women have violent nihilist fantasies, too. One GTA V ad (pictured above) even depicts a woman being arrested against a car by a female cop. So it’s not that Rockstar can’t conceptualize female characters; it’s that the company simply doesn’t want to give us the option of playing as them. Creating a playable female character won’t force male gamers to use that character, but it would give the entire user base a choice, and male gamers might actually enjoy playing as a female protagonist.

Female gamers are so desperate for a playable GTA woman that we don’t even really care whether she’s written as a bikini-wearing sexual fantasy, like the one on the current GTA posters, or as a less-scantily-clad career criminal like Snoop from The Wire. We just want more choices, and for influential people like Houser to stop being so condescending about the question even being asked.

Luckily, no one can stop us from playing GTA V as female avatars in the online version. So watch out, citizens of Los Santos. We’re shooting to kill.

She acknowledges that there are female criminals in the game, she says she would like to play as them. The quotes she pulled are direct quotes from the Housers about why they didn't have a female protagonist so I don't see how they were twisted. If you read the whole article it is not that inflammatory.

I think this has largely already happened.

In an era where even smaller companies like can get their message out via fan sites, Youtube trailers, in-store displays, games media, professionalism and grass-roots, has tried to become something more than release dates and press releases. Lord knows the games media isn't doing Koei Tecmo any favors. However, where the grassroots media (Youtubers, twitch streamers, gamer-run sites like RPGamer) have gone in the direction of involving (not agreeing with always, just involving and listening to) their audience, professional media has gone the route of fanning flames and projecting an aura of moral superiority. GameSpot is pretty much the Kotaku JV team now, Giant Bomb will protect their friends even at the cost of its own audience, and the rest of the games media trades on cynicism and useless snark. The embers have been brewing for ages, and things like ridiculing fans' legitimate concerns most of the time (the ME3 fiasco is a great example) and broad-brushing all of gaming based on idiots on social media just added enough fuel to make this an inferno.

The real victim in all this? Indie gaming. I've had a suspicion for a long time that the indie scene is dominated by cliques, but the whole saga of the last few weeks has concerned it. They tend not to have the same ability to advertise as traditional games companies, so they need this exclusionary, clique-infested hellhole to get the word out on their games. I wonder how many games I've missed because the developer didn't schmooze with the right people. I really hope that more Youtubers and similar grass-roots content creators will pick up the slack, because I know that I'll now wonder if an indie game's only being hyped by professional games media because of a friendship.

@thatpinguino

The ending to Mass Effect 3 was certainly bad, but I don't see consumers in other industries torpedoing metacritic and starting petitions when a new movie/book/show doesn't end how they would like. People are right to complain and criticize, but the extent of the reaction with disappointing games is staggering.

Other industries' media aren't viewed with as much suspicion. Movies and albums are rated all across the board, and there's almost never suspicion that reviews are being successfully influenced by industry favors. Critics don't routinely pull punches in movie and music criticism quite as much as they do in games. There's no 7-10/3-5 scale for film or music, but it's pretty evident that this these are the real scales for gaming 90% of the time. Basically, audiophiles and movie buffs don't have as many reasons to explode as gamers do.

You know what, GTA 5 was literally the first game with little to no good female characters in the series. Vice City, maybe. RDR absolutely, Bonnie springs to mind.

Also, for the record, my main in GTA: Online is a female character. She kicks a ton of ass, and in fact the female PCs have WAY more and better options for wardrobe than the males do.

I know what her main point is, like I said, that I would have been able to ignore. But she also spends a good portion of the article claiming Rockstar are saying to women:

...whether it’s stated directly or just suggested: You don’t belong here.

And she doesn't acknowledge female criminals are in the game, she acknowledges the promo art features a woman being arrested by a female cop. Which reminds me one other problem with her article: she hadn't played the game. She can't admit female criminals are in the game because she didn't know what was in the game. Everything she is saying about the game (and Houser's quotes) is speculation and assumption. If she would have waited a week she would have known the game does in fact have female criminals and she would have know Dan Houser's comments weren't "condescending" they were in fact the truth, masculinity is the cornerstone of the story GTA 5 told.