vinny

@alex: @brad: @vinny: @patrickklepek: @rorie:

I feel like you guys are pressuring me to ask you something and I don't know what to ask. This is making me very uncomfortable.

I've been following this from the start and I've always said the anti "social justice warrior" part poisoned the well right from the start. Asking questions about how the business works and how it interacts with the media covering/critiquing this business is a good thing. In a world where there are voices saying the wall between editorial and marketing should be removed I think those are legitimate questions. It requires constant vigilance and scrutiny.

But I've never thought gamergate was the vessel to do this. It was infused by something much nastier right from the start.

I'm not sure there's a whole lot I can say at this point, other than reiterate the message that I'm disappointed GB fell in line with all the other sites and writers being bullied into "taking a hardline official company stance" on this thing, and doing so without at least looking into why some people feel the way they do.

The general staff message at the top of this piece is spot-on. Hate and threats and the like are not okay, addressed to ANYone.

...Which is why it's that much harder to stomach that everyone unequivocally calls people involved in gamergate "harassers", or, at best, "misguided and confused". Especially after seeing the Gawker network employees spewing hateful bile at their view of gamers lately, I can't stand by the idea that gamers are confused children trying to fight some holy war.

Some gamers are sick of nobody listening to them, and frankly, this is more acknowledgement than they tend to get anyway. We're back to 90s-era "gamers are terrible people!" media mentality, and it's unfortunately something most people are used to.

I've read Jeff's statement and once again this whole thing has been portrayed as a one way street. Only people who were against gamergate or haven't even done anything(afaik some people were harassed who didn't talk about this thing) were targets of harassment, no mention of Boogie or TotalBiscuit, but whatever. What about comments years ago from GB's staff about European journalists? Which are clearly on the take and do this and that? I remember that distinctly happening multiple times. You can call people which you don't know personally or professionally all kind of shit and when it gets back at you(years later and from other people obviously) this is somehow farcical and just a smokescreen for people to instigate harassment. Nice narrative you've got there.

Look, I don't come to video game websites for journalistic integrity, I don't fight that fight. I thought something good might've come out of GG and the majority of events were negative(death threats for everybody). And I for one, don't think that game journalism WORLDWIDE is corrupt, so take it or leave it.

That is insidious Patrick and you know it. Anti-GGers have harassed gamers including Ms. Alexander, Ms. Quinn and even Ms. Wu. So by your logic, none of those sources are credible.

A number of their complaints have been substantiated as well. Press has personally financially supported Developers. Developers and Press have had relationships far closer than journalistic integrity should dictate. Hell, GamesJurnosPros is a facsimile of the JournoList. There is a real narrative being built that gaming websites are corrupt, and GG is asking for an end to that. I think they have blown the whole thing out of proportion, but to have the audacity to claim GamerGate: couldn't articulate beyond "don't criticize games in a way I don't like them being criticized."" is just false and you know it.

That is "spooky" when BIOS locks up. The usually means some piece of hardware is going wacky while BIOS is trying to probe/query it. Has it always locked up or was there a point in the past where it worked?

@vinny said:

I'm mostly concerned about the general lack of diversity amongst the staff and the guest roster at large. In particular, I think only having dudes writing pieces and appearing on camera is ultimately limiting, and doesn't reflect how broad and inclusive games are in 2014. I should point out that I'm not suggesting that anybody at GB — new or old — is undeserving of their position or that there was a conscious decision to only have dudes on staff. I also recognise that, intentional or not, there's been a lot of fresh, interesting and diverse voices on the site lately, which is terrific to see and makes me really optimistic for the future.