Standing Silent in the Echo Chamber

You also have to ask yourself what the audience actually is that reads those articles. It's the core gamers, i.e. the people that the articles comdemn.

If it wasn't directed at me, then fine, but given that you addressed something I had recently made a post on, can't you understand why I would think you were responding to me?

If it was a coincidence, fair enough. But I don't see why you wouldn't think of it as a reasonable mistake.to make.

Leigh Alexander posted links to articles describing the actions she found abhorrent, i.e the people attacking Zoe Quinn, the people threatening Anita Sarkeesian. Again, I felt it was clear that she was targeting those individuals.

Oh no, I totally get that. Coincidences happen, and honestly I've been avoiding this thread for a while just because every time people have tried to talk about this in the past, I think of something I really wanna say and then the thread ends up deleted before/just after I make the post. Which is a bummer. So this time I just fired off something I've been wanting to say for a while and didn't really bother thinking about it again after the fact. That said, you're still allowed to get offended by it, if you feel like you're included in what I was referring to originally, i.e. people who are telling other people what they should and shouldn't be offended by.

http://www.donotlink.com/bdga

Except it was not clear because she does not seem to know who her audience is.

Yeah I've been keeping my head down and improving my lap times in Assetto Corsa, and apparently while I was doing that gaming culture imploded or exploded or something and gamers are dead now?

@sergio said:

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Ultimately, the freedom of expression of developers is paramount. They can make what they want to make. It doesn't matter if someone decides it's misogynist, sexist, racist, homophobic or otherwise.

Here's a link to Emma Watson giving a speech about Gender Equality that I pretty much wholeheartedly agree with and talking about something that it constantly pisses me off when it gets ignored- specifically that gender stereotypes have fucked up men and boys on a lot of levels and yet they're mocked and ridiculed for speaking out about it.

"Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society despite my needing his presence as a child as much as my mother’s.

I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it would make them look less “macho”—in fact in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20-49; eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality either.

We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.

If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.

Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong… It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals.

If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we are—we can all be freer and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.

I want men to take up this mantle. So their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from prejudice but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too—reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned and in doing so be a more true and complete version of themselves."

@exfate: But pointing out problematic things in a game is not even sort of close to taking away the developer's freedom of expression. But trying to shut down any criticism of games you like is restricting critics' freedom of expression.

While I do agree with you, if someone points out things that they find offensive, and they do so with the implication that what a developer is creating is harmful to society, I think that requires a bit more of a delicate touch than saying that the graphics weren't good, or the game wasn't very fun.

And while I often question the tone of arguments from both sides of this conversation, I fully support the right to criticism, and understand the importance of allowing freedom of expression. While I do think people should be careful of the words and the tone they use in these discussions--primarily in the interest of making some actual progress, and not just preaching to the choir--I don't feel anyone should be silenced for being rude or belligerent either.

For those who feel the same, you might be interested in some of the more recent developments in this whole continuing "gamergate" controversy:

Members of an email list called GameJournoPros repeatedly urged The Escapist website to shutdown their "gamergate" thread. The members of the e-mail list consist of people from from many websites, including Kotaku, Polygon, and Ars Technica. That thread would be the equivalent of this thread, and others like it on Giant Bomb. Actual harassment and trolling is addressed by moderators, and the vast majority of the thread is a discussion on the issue.

The forum thread remained despite urging from some game journalists to silence that discussion.

Later that week, the Escapist "gamergate" thread was targeted with a DDOS attack, which ended up taking down all of their forums.

You can read all about it here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/09/20/the-escapist-forums-brought-down-in-ddos-attack/

In somewhat related news, You tube personality, atheist, anti-feminist and Anita Sarkeesian critic Thunderf00t was banned from twitter. He is a great example of the type of person who suffers from the rude and belligerent tone that I talk about above. He's kind of an asshole. The problem is, lots of people are assholes on twitter, and they don't get banned.

This feels like twitter picking sides in a debate to the point where they are silencing someone's voice, and that should concern you, even if it is an asshole like thunderf00t. Should anyone have evidence of him making an actual threat against Sarkeesian, or anything else that would warrant such action, I would be interested in seeing it. For his side of the story, here is the video where he talks about being banned, and here is a video detailing what he claims were the tweets that led up to him being banned.

@spaceinsomniac: I will say very little about Kuchera because he is a man I do not respect. Kuchera seems to think that taking the right side on an issue is enough to make him a good person and acts accordingly.

Outside of him and a few others I thought the majority of the conversation was mostly reasonable and trying to sincerely deal with tough questions for people in their positions dealing with a unique problem, this would be a legitimate use of this type of email exchange group.

The exceptions absolutely are important though. The tone of Kuchera and others in the way they discuss their audience, the situation, and communicate with their colleagues gets ugly several times consistently coming from a few individuals. I won't say anymore than that these people need to mature. This is whatever though, learning to be more considerate and reflective is for them to deal with if I see that problem within any article in particular I think it should be called out but these are (somewhat) personal conversations even if the subject is professional. Not much of an issue.

Kyle Orland though needs to seriously rethink what his role as a journalist means within the gaming industry, his exchanges in this email exchange make him look unprofessional, and makes it seem like he considers his colleagues unprofessional as well. I read his apology concerning this subject but it missed a lot of points. He seems to blame the framing of the Breitbart article and says the email exchange group was not created for collusion. I agree that the whole "secret" "elites" thing is BS but don't deny that it's private, people don't know what's going on there, and the framing overall is irrelevant to the criticism. Now I'm sure that he didn't create the group for collusion but the group being exposed didn't create the wrong impression about it, he did. Kyle Orland betrayed his own creation and made it into something he didn't originally intend it to be with his own words and it did become a forum for, at least proposed, collusion.

The self-indulgent flippancy from members of this staff over very real and specific instances of unethical behavior within this exchange is disappointing. This is not like fantasy football and you know it, this was a professional not personal exchange dealing with their jobs as gaming press, it is relevant. This was not just hanging out and you know it.

Kyle Orland was not successful and that's encouraging but the attempt to collude in this way does, and rightly should, undermine trust in the industry and especially the other members who would have joined Orland even if he didn't succeed. Questions will be asked if this was the only time such proposals have happened and with events like the extremely coincidental publishing of "gamers dying" articles they should be.

A critic is free to say they don't like something, but I expect them to show their work before they conclude that this thing they don't like is bad for others and society.

I think that millions of gamers accepting uneducated opinion pieces and tweets as facts is much more scary than a developer putting a tit or two in their game.

Also if Patrick Klepek is sincere about improving the level of discourse on the internet then why has he not called out any of his colleagues for their twitter exchanges? If he is too worried about complicating his professional life then I understand that but if it is a principled stance then maybe it should be important enough to do anyway.

He has drawn attention to some of the harassment by people associating themselves with "Gamergate" and condemned it, and rightly so, but why has he not, to my knowledge, condemned the harassment, DDOSing, Doxxing, and death threats by anti-"gamergate" people? Maybe he thinks that those people are a minority who don't represent the movement and he'd probably be right but he has not been so generous to the "Gamergate" supporters who have said the same thing all along.

Core gamers aren't all hate spewing trash. Some of them are. That's who the articles condemned.

Gonna have to disagree here, the articles weren't attacking harassers, they were attacking the idea of a gamer identity. The idea that there is still a core gamer audience was what was being attacked.

@n1nj4d00m: I identify as a gamer and I didn't feel targeted cause I didn't harass anyone. So going to have to refute your refutation

Maybe the fact is he has no idea what is going on with them. Maybe Patrick is worried about posting inaccuracies and half-true details just to make you feel happy which is terrible journalism.

I'll give you a hint: According to "you", it isn't the place of any journalist to promote or denounce anything they report on. Are you asking Patrick to ignore that just for now then go back? It is not Patrick's place to tell others how to do their job. Go ahead and ask for better standards and high quality but suggesting they should do this or that probably not your concern let alone business.

I find it hard to believe that he's seen none of it, but if so you're right I wouldn't blame him for not commenting on something he isn't aware of.

For this part I'm going to need a little help here. Could you clarify I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Also, as a little side note, no need to get defensive I just want to have a conversation. Thanks. :)

I'm not defensive or offended. Just pointing out a fallacy in the argument. You can't demand journalist be held and try to set a higher standard then go "Why aren't they saying anything about it?"

Do you want Patrick to be a journalist or do you want Patrick to make fluff pieces that the masses want to feel happy about themselves?

@extomar: I don't want him to write I piece on anything, I'm talking about on his Twitter. Pointing out on your personal twitter that Phil Fish calling people, "subhuman little shits" or calling them, "essentially rapists" isn't telling Phil how to do his job. Pointing out that Devin Feraci saying, "I have more respect for ISIS than the anti-Quinn people" is problematic is not telling Feraci how to do his job. Telling Adam Sessler that saying gamers are worse than chemical weapons dealers is inappropriate is not telling Sessler how to do his job.

Also I should point out that, as I said originally, if Patrick doesn't want to address members of his own profession over their behavior because he has valid professional concerns over doing so I understand that. I do think that even in that case tweeting something non-specific just about civility and discourse from people who are supposed to be setting the tone could be reasonable.

I'm not sure what him condemning inappropriate attacks from both sides has to do with journalistic ethics. All I want is an equal standard of condemning poor behavior from both sides, I think that's reasonable.

If it's not clear I like Patrick, and I respect him as a journalist, a thinker, and as an entertainer. If you have any doubt about that you can look back through any post I've made since joining this site. I think people like Patrick who have their colleague's respect as well can do a lot to deescalate situations like these and though he is not required to I would think that he would want to. I think a lot of this exchange of hyperbole is associated with This concept of sociology/psychology and telling both sides to calm down can help cooler heads prevail.

Edit: Added some more thoughts.

I wrote about this topic in a reply to Patrick recently, so I thought I'd share that here.

But the articles that do engage in this belligerence are either promoted or ignored. There are no journalists standing up and saying "This is contributing to a cycle of hate, and this is a bad thing. Stop doing this." And of course that is true, not because everyone is best friends with everyone, but because you don't criticize your peers. It's extremely unprofessional to attack others in your field, and it would make you an instant pariah. But no one is telling that story, so were left with people like myself on message boards. People who aren't even a blip on the radar in the large scheme of things, and who are frequently conflated with the absolute worst monsters on the "anti-SJW" side of things.

And I'm sure it's true that the most vile comments are being directed towards women by internet trolls, but they should not be the ones who dictate the tone of the discussion. If that happens, then they're getting exactly what they want. When random internet trolls are being belligerent, insulting people, and drawing lines in the sand, and that leads to game journalists doing the same, guess who I'm disappointed in more? It's the people who are supposed to be tactful and professional, not the random hateful mob that will always exist in some form or another.

But those articles--especially Leigh's--were written in a way that conflates the two, and promotes harmful and offensive stereotypes that have nothing to do with harassment. An excerpt:

'Game culture’ as we know it is kind of embarrassing -- it’s not even culture. It’s buying things, spackling over memes and in-jokes repeatedly, and it’s getting mad on the internet.

It’s young men queuing with plush mushroom hats and backpacks and jutting promo poster rolls. Queuing passionately for hours, at events around the world, to see the things that marketers want them to see. To find out whether they should buy things or not. They don’t know how to dress or behave. Television cameras pan across these listless queues, and often catch the expressions of people who don’t quite know why they themselves are standing there.

So unless your argument is no one could possibly read a paragraph like that and be offended for any other reason, aside from the the people engaged in harassment, I think people have a point to say that some of those articles had definite "collateral damage" problems. If they were directed only at the harassers, that doesn't excuse the friendly fire that resulted from their poor implementation.

@spaceinsomniac: You're leaving out a lot

‘Games culture’ is a petri dish of people who know so little about how human social interaction and professional life works that they can concoct online ‘wars’ about social justice or ‘game journalism ethics,’ straight-faced, and cause genuine human consequences. Because of video games.

Lately, I often find myself wondering what I’m even doing here. And I know I’m not alone.

All of us should be better than this. You should be deeply questioning your life choices if this and this andthis are the prominent public face your business presents to the rest of the world.

This is what the rest of the world knows about your industry -- this, and headlines about billion-dollar war simulators or those junkies with the touchscreen candies. That’s it. You should absolutely be better than this.

(...)

Right, let’s say it’s a vocal minority that’s not representative of most people. Most people, from indies to industry leaders, are mortified, furious, disheartened at the direction industry conversation has taken in the past few weeks. It’s not like there are reputable outlets publishing rational articles in favor of the trolls’ ‘side’. Don’t give press to the harassers. Don’t blame an entire industry for a few bad apples.

Yet disclaiming liability is clearly no help. Game websites with huge community hubs whose fans are often associated with blunt Twitter hate mobs sort of shrug, they say things like ‘we delete the really bad stuff, what else can we do’ and ‘those people don’t represent our community’ -- but actually, those people do represent your community. That’s what your community is known for, whether you like it or not.

When you decline to create or to curate a culture in your spaces, you’re responsible for what spawns in the vacuum. That’s what’s been happening to games.

@teaoverlord said:

Critics can say what they like, they have the right to speak but not the right to be heard. Anita Sarkeesian and those who promote her criticism are directly stating that developers should listen to them. They have no business expecting that.

I'd also like to point out that not all negative opinions about something are valid as criticism. Criticism is informed opinion--that is to say, opinions based on evidence. "This trope is misogynist" is not criticism, it is a personal opinion disguised as a statement of fact. The critic has to back it up by explaining why the trope is misogynist, based on some kind of evidence. There are two ways that could be achieved; Either the critic must cite evidence that creator had misogynistic intent, or that the audience interpreted the content as misogynistic. If a critic simply chooses to cite their own personal experience as evidence, then it is no longer criticism. They should also be stating, "I think this trope is misogynist" (indicating that they are expressing a personal opinion) rather than "This trope is misogynist" (indicating they are expressing the subjective truth,) or else they are being misleading in their use of language.

It doesn't matter, because nothing written after that justifies those generalizations that have nothing to do with harassment.

Would it be acceptable for me to make generalizations about the entire feminist culture, point to the most awful and hateful things that extreme feminists have done, and then accuse moderate and respectful feminists of being responsible for the worst of their culture?

If not, why should this be acceptable while that isn't?

@spaceinsomniac: How did he respond? Unless it was meant to be a private exchange I'd be curious to know.

Emma Watson is one righteous broad. Seriously. So cool.

Hot damn.

Because one side is full of a lot of people making death threats because they feel their hobby is threatened? Can't we point out how death threats and hoping that people are the victims of sexual assualt is not okay? It doesn't matter if its a minority of the audience thats actually doing it, it's still a significant number and seems to generally be hand-waved away by claims of "Well, I'm not like that so why should I care?" or "You can't do anything about jerks on the internet, so just ignore it."

I imagine if people were consistently harassing you or saying the worst shit to you you'd have a hard time ignoring it. Seeing one of my favorite LPers have to put her Twitter account on lockdown because people wouldn't stop harassing her about being a feminist (insert your expletive that begins with the letter c here) depressed the hell out of me.

I'm not good at putting my thoughts out there without coming off as a prick, but this kind of sums up my feelings on the matter.

You missed the point: Why do you want Patrick to say anything about anything???? Do you want Patrick to yammer on to make yourself feel better??? Do you want to focus on people you hate saying things you hate to think about??? You are going to be just fine without never knowing what Patrick knows or feels. If you feel both sides need to be condemned then why do you need anyone else to say that? Why not ask that from Jeff or Brad or whom ever?

It sounds like the issue is yours not Patrick or anyone else. It seems like you are trying to veil an attempt to surround yourself with like minded people so you can have your echo chamber (which is what this thread is about) which is a giant "whatever". You can't make Patrick or anyone else have an opinion let alone force them to state it.

@alkaiser: To my knowledge every single person who has participated in the discussion here has harshly condemned harassment, and threats. I think the question of whether we can condemn those actions and those elements has been answered, at least for this community.

I'm also going to assume that the harassment and threats from people opposed to "Gamergate" are unacceptable to you and don't represent that movement as a whole either. I wouldn't be surprised if there has been more harassment and inappropriate behavior on the side of people associating themselves with "Gamergate" but there is horrible behavior coming from both and that behavior represents neither.

@spraynardtatum: this

I come here for the personalities and Dan is a breath of fresh air when it comes down to just playing the games.

@extomar: I'm glad the internet gives me the privilege of having fair-minded discussions with people assuming good-faith like you.

Extomar, despite all this I'm still going to respect you but as far as discussion goes I think you and I are done here.

The people living next door to Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer were unaware of what was going on around them too. I don't think blissful ignorance is a good thing.

Actually, both "sides" of this have people making death threats, doxxing people, harassing people, and so on.

To be clear, I'm very opposed to harassment, as is just about everyone on Giant Bomb. If someone would like to say otherwise, I'm sure a moderator will be happy to show them the door, and good riddance to them if that's the case.

I also would never suggest "Well, I'm not like that so why should I care?" Of course I should care, and I certainly do care. So let's move onto the next possible feeling:

"You can't do anything about jerks on the internet, so just ignore it." While I would never suggest "you shouldn't let it bother you," I do feel that it's important think about the fact that publicizing hate might be leading to more hate. We're talking about people who are wanting a negative reaction. Those don't seem like the people who would be affected by "don't do this, this is wrong" type articles decrying harassment and abuse.

I'll mention a trigger warning right here, as I'm about to use an example that concerns rape.

I'm sure you've seen some public service announcements to the effect of "Just because a girl says yes when she's drunk, that doesn't mean she would have said yes when sober." No matter if you consider that to be rape or not--and depending on the level of intoxication, the state will be happy to decide that for you--it's just decent human behavior to make sure someone isn't going to regret their sexual decisions the next day. Those sort of ads get people to think about things like that before being put in those situations, and I think that sort of thing can only help.

However I've also seen an ad to the effect of "Why do we need feminism? Because we tell girls 'watch your glass when you're at a party' instead of telling boys not to rape."

The thing is, there's no gray area when you're putting drugs into someones drink and raping them afterwards. If you do that sort of thing, you're absolute scum, and no amount of commercials telling boys not to rape are going to help. At that point, you might as well be showing "it's not okay to murder people" ads.

So, the question becomes do articles condemning death threats and harassment actually have a positive affect on people or not? Believe me, if I thought they did help change the minds of hateful trolls, I'd happily accept a daily "online abuse is a bad thing" article. But I don't believe they are changing people's minds, and some of them that conflate people on one side of an issue and blame an entire community for the absolute worst behavior of its members, I think those articles might be making things worse.

I've already seen several comments from people who didn't care about any of these issues until journalists started blaming them for the existence of the most offensive and hateful members of the gaming community. Some of those people who "pick a side" in this fight could turn out to be monsters themselves, although I certainly hope not.

So what's the answer? If these articles--even the ones that don't blame or generalize anyone but people doing actual harassing--don't do anything to change the minds of harassers, perhaps they at least give comfort to those being attacked, and let people know that there are many who are appalled by those actions. And it's certainly important to report news like Sarkeesian being driven out of her home by death threats. But what should people do that will actually reduce the unfortunate amount of truly hateful people who follow video games? I don't have an answer for that, and I wish I did, but I don't think that journalists targeting the entire gaming community with blame and conflation is helping, and that's all I'm trying to say.

While you might not agree with me, hopefully you at least understand my opinion on the subject a bit more.

I originally wrote that as a reply to a thread that ended up being closed by the time I hit post, so I instead sent the message to Patrick over the private message system. I also made sure to point out I was talking about game journalism in general, and nothing was directed at Giant Bomb. He was kind enough to respond, but seeing as he did so via PM, I don't think I should share his reply publicly.

I will say that he was very respectful, but I didn't get the impression that he shared my concerns regarding belligerence in games journalism. Most of his reply related to other topics, and what I posted was only a portion of what I wrote.

I'm glad there's a discussion going on here now. Giant Bomb felt like a safe haven from all the garbage and coming to this thread and seeing a civilized discussion comforts me in a weird way.

Patrick is Giant Bomb's news reporter, so I think heyguys is suggesting that he report the news. Not just the news that makes the people on one side of an issue look reasonable and respectful, and the people on the other side look hateful and crazy.

I'm not sure what him condemning inappropriate attacks from both sides has to do with journalistic ethics. All I want is an equal standard of condemning poor behavior from both sides, I think that's reasonable.

Seems like a fair request to me, although not an easy one. That mirror-image perceptions concept absolutely nails the problem here. Many people on each side view themselves as good people fighting for what is right and view their opponents as hateful and corrupt, and that problem won't be going anywhere until more game reporters are willing to occasionally talk about things that could make "their side" look less than perfect, or even give an actual voice to people who they disagree with. On the other hand, "gamergate" people need to understand why asking journalists to openly criticize their peers is career suicide, and why their heels are just as dug into the ground as those calling them out. They're a lot closer to most of the people suffering abuse over these issues. They know them, and it makes everything much more personal, and much more hurtful.

As for the rest of your post, I would reconsider assigning people beliefs and opinions that they don't argue themselves. I'm sure you dislike it when people do that with you, and that sort of thing is why it's so damn hard to have a conversation about this sort of thing in the first place. On the other hand, you did contribute a nice example of the mirror-image perceptions issue that heyguys mentioned.

@spaceinsomniac: Just to clarify, I actually don't particularly want Patrick to write up any story for the site over this whole saga, that's his professional prerogative and if I were in his position I don't know that I would wade into these muddy waters because there's so much BS out there it's hard to know what a story would even cover.

The only thing I'm wondering about is why Patrick hasn't condemned the harassment, threats, ect. from the anti-"Gamergate" side on his twitter like he has the people who are pro "Gamergate". The only reason I'm talking about Patrick is because he has stated his personal principles on the topic of internet harassment many times and stated that he 'd use his platform as a man with a large twitter followng to bring attention to harassers and discourage it. I'm not sure if that's an effective way to combat these sorts of things but I admire the principles. However, a principle is only a principle if applied consistently and I'm worried Patrick hasn't spoken up because he's gotten a little taken in by this tribalism nonsense. I'm obviously not trying to force him to do anything, he can chose to do anything he wants. I'll continue to be a fan.

This was just something I was a little curious about, but it's not really a big deal. So if I've made myself clear I'd rather move on. As a side note I'm not going to engage with anyone who comes to their keyboard angry, I'm not angry, none of us needs to be. If someone thinks I'm wrong that's fine just explain your point of view to me and I'll read it, I might be wrong and I'd be happy to consider that.

But what is the story here? That people think there is collusion between professions?? Is it the shocking revelation that people with professional connections use those professional connections?? That isn't a story. I'd rather see Patrick create pieces on the poor behavior of the public before I want him to go digging around in people's "virtual trash" for a non-story. This is what is so baffling about "gamergate" where I only see fanboys up in arms over nonsense.

To believe it is anyone's business who any of them talk to is like demanding to know who Patrick has talked to in the last year to create all of his stories while praising him for his "Interview Dump Truck" segments is shows the issue. They were created due to Patrick having and using an extensive professional network.

I think you overestimate the freedom big name devs have. There's plenty of pressure from publishers to make things as generic as possible, to shoehorn mechanics where they don't belong and to make sure that people don't get representation. Games with female protagonists get about one third the marketing budget as games with male protagonists, if that. Also don't give me this "They can do what they want." garbage.What your saying is that people shouldn't speak up if there's racism or sexism in a game. Yeah i'm sure we've heard that a bunch. But I think that's complete bullshit, sorry. If Ubisoft came out with "The Iron Chink: The Ching Chong Chinaman" I'm fairly certain everyone would be in the right by calling that shit out.

Show me the gamers who have been victimized for loving video games. Show me that over the past 20 years. Because I've been on the internet for the last 18 or 19 years, but I haven't seen all these terrible stories of people who have been prejudiced against for having a video game in their house. What I have seen is:

-Death threats over a patch for Black Ops 2

(Link to said twitter account, with some interesting responses)

-Death threats because sites giving Minecraft away for free were shutting down

A tweet from Notch verifying this

-Here we have a couple of posts about Bioware Employees

Discussing such things as Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3

And the backlash it caused. And by backlash, I mean death threats to them and their children.

-The whole 'controversy over mighty No. 9' which is best laughed at here

and also here, this one being much shorter but both are pretty great on their own

(For fun, click to the end to watch it spiral out of control)

And all this is stuff in the last couple years. Hell, if we want to go back and get even more personal, how much shit do you think Jeff Gerstmann got because he gave a game a good review score that wasn't perfect enough for rabid fanboys? To the point that there are still bitter people to this day mad about a game that came out in 2006?

This stuff isn't new. For some reason acting like this and harassing people is viewed as something that should have been prevented by the victim. The "Oh, well this wouldn't have happened if he had just done his job correctly" or all that bullshit. We make excuses or shift blame because we don't want to admit that the word gamer has a bad reputation that isn't completely undeserved. When these things consistently happen over the course of years and years, people's view on your subculture are going to continually shift lower and lower regardless of how squeaky-clean you may be as an individual. Hell, I'm sure there are probably a few decent people on a site like 4chan that know how to act like socially acceptable human beings but my views of their users as a whole is completely tainted by their reputation and being horrible on a consistent basis.

I've gotten to the point where I've stopped checking out gaming news because it's saddening to see the new depths we drudge year by year. I mean, the only reason I even made this post to begin with was because of people I follow/friended on social networking suddenly bringing up this crazy hashtag nonsense and how it all kinda spilled over from there. Without that impetus, I probably wouldn't even be back on this forum right now because I've tried to shut out all the nonsense that goes along with my hobby because it's upsetting to have to acknowledge.

No, that's not much of a story, and I've previously said that I don't think the whole collusion issue is that big of a deal in most cases. There are a handful of actual issues--like a Kotaku writer promoting her roommate's game--but it's subjective how much of an issue they really are, and it's debatable how widespread the issues really are.

If Patrick is going to create pieces on the poor behavior of the public--or even tweet about it--it would be fair for him also to hold game journalists to a higher standard as well. The same goes for those he promotes through his worth reading features. As heyguys wrote:

I don't want him to write I piece on anything, I'm talking about on his Twitter. Pointing out on your personal twitter that Phil Fish calling people, "subhuman little shits" or calling them, "essentially rapists" isn't telling Phil how to do his job. Pointing out that Devin Feraci saying, "I have more respect for ISIS than the anti-Quinn people" is problematic is not telling Feraci how to do his job. Telling Adam Sessler that saying gamers are worse than chemical weapons dealers is inappropriate is not telling Sessler how to do his job.

Even if he's not calling people out by name, it would be nice to have more voices in the gaming press speaking out against those who contribute to this cycle of hate, belligerence, conflation, and misrepresentation.

I think it's important to realize that I've seen similar statements directed towards the Giant Bomb community. It's hard to properly judge a community from the outside, especially when you're repeatedly only shown the worst of its members as a representation.

This is a very long video, but I would very much recommend giving it a listen. It gives interesting input on the situation from the perspective of a number of female gamers.

@darkdragonmage99: I can't tell if what you wrote was serious or farcical and that is about where I am with the whole gamergate movement right now.

This just got bumped after two days with what appears to be copy & paste spam...before that, the last reply was nothing but a video which was also a bump after more than 24 hours of inactivity. Time to move on, folks.