Combating Recent, Ugly Incidents of Misogyny In Gamer Culture 1134
ideonexus writes: 2490 gamers, developers and journalists have signed an open letter supporting inclusiveness in the gaming community after indie game developer Zoe Quinn received backlash and harassment when her ex-boyfriend posted false accusations that she traded sex for favorable reviews of her game and feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian was driven from her home after receiving death and rape threats for her videos illustrating the way some mainstream games encourage the commoditization of and violence against women. The harassment has prompted geek-dating advice columnist Harris O'Malley to declare the backlash the "Extinction Burst of Gaming Culture," the last reactionary gasp before the culture shifts to become more inclusive.
More than the article states... (Score:5, Informative)
It wasn't just "false accusations" from her ex-boyfriend. It was accusations from many of her boyfriends and other people that she slept with coupled with her story not making any sense and having plenty of holes in it. Oh, and also no proof that any of it took place.
As for Anita Sarkeesian? Well, after seeing how lying about being a victim worked out so well for Zoe, it's not exactly a big stretch to say that maybe she did the same thing. I mean, all those tweets coming in, from only one user, faster than anyone could type them, and immediately after receiving them we're supposed to believe that Anita logged out of her account and just so happened to search for those exact tweets, then took a screenshot of them as proof that she was "stalked and driven from her home by a raid."
There's a few things that aren't adding up here.
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:5, Informative)
Sad thing is that there's so much truth to the allegations against Zoe that has been drowned out by the idiots and trolls who want to offend or think that their way works. She even admitted flat out on twitter to having sex for publicity, and yet not a single time has the issue journalistic integrity of video game reporting been raised. There exist obvious and blatant conflicts of interest in several of her endeavors and the media that actually cares to report this ignores this fact. That slashdot plays along is not surprising, this website has a long reputation of pandering to that crowd and backing down on real facts cases like these. It's much easier to just play along right?
Consider also that Zoe Quinn was outright accused of sexually harrassing a fellow dev at a wedding, whereupon she immediately began the process of what they call "victim blaming" and riled her army of fans/supporters to berate and verbally assault him. There is a huge double standard for the controversy surrounding zoe quinn, and everything she's done wrong is being swept under the carpet because "omg internet bullies".
I don't care if she had sex with fucking 10,000 guys; that's not the issue at heart here. The 'allegations' are actually facts, and what I care about is that she slept with those people for publicity she did not deserve, that was taken from more deserving games. AAA devs don't care because money, but for indie devs this is extremely important because if it becomes a good ol' boy system in video game journalism then good games that deserve the spotlight will miss out even more than they do. And, also, bad games that don't deserve shit will continue to flood steam and make the front page. Stop supporting videogame-political machines.
Re:I predict (Score:4, Informative)
Given the fact this is a quite heavily biased story not looking at the actual complaints of the other side, pretty much made by "the ones that arrived first", i don't think it will last even seconds before the shitstorm begins.
Re:I predict (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:4, Informative)
"Reference-less accusations seem to prove the article's point."
What, have you had your head buried in the sand this entire time? Plenty of references down to the one being accused admitting it publicly.
Imbecile.
Re:I predict (Score:4, Informative)
That's the problem. Both women lied about events, they created their own hate campaign and claimed it was against them. You'll notice there are no police complaints for any of the things they claim. The massive conflict of interest between these two women and having sex with a number of prominent people in the gaming "review" industry is never addressed by the rags, just the fake stuff these women created. They're playing the industry to make their millions. They've openly discussed it, clearly thinking twitter to individuals is private.
The problem is many people think they're white knights and go all out to protect these fair damsels. Personally, I'd hope someone reports the death threats to the police, they perform an investigation and once the truth comes out, we'll never hear from these two again, or their champions.
Re:False accusations? (Score:5, Informative)
Mod parent up big time. Her boyfriend has posted significant amounts of evidence supporting his claims, and Zoe has not refuted them.
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:2, Informative)
Zoe Quinn vs. Internet (Score:3, Informative)
Instead of saying that those accusations were false, Zoe Quinn and co. proceeded to delete everything, ban everybody from gaming zine-s who talked about it. Zoe Quinn herself never said that those accusations are false.
Attack against her was not because shes a woman, or that she sleeps around. She sleeped around with people who worked in gaming news sites that hyped her game. That`s why.
In every thread or site or blog dissing here, there is zero hate because shes a woman, nobody cares about her gender. Gender is not the issue, it never was.
Other things about her have also surfaced. Like she harassed thefineyoungcapitalists, who were women devs BTW. Same women who gaming news sites want to protect, but refused to publish their side of the story because "You don`t talk about Zoe Quinn`s bad behavior". Or how she sexually harassed someone in her wedding.
Catchup for those outside of the circle (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I predict (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I predict (Score:2, Informative)
Hey, look this lie again.
She never said it. Ever.
http://youtu.be/Afgtd8ZsXzI
At 0:13 "I'm not a fan of video games"
Literally took all of 5 seconds to look up.
Re:Astroturfing for Hillary Clinton (Score:5, Informative)
No, but just about "every last women who picks up a controller" will be threatened with violence or rape by a gamer.
http://fatuglyorslutty.com/category/death-threats/
That ^^ ... is a fucking problem. I sure as shit don't have to deal with crap like that when I'm online.
Even if not a single person ever followed through on their threats, it creates an incredibly hostile atmosphere that few would want to endure therefore creating a cultural divide and effectively excluding women from the activity.
And, somehow, even if that was deemed acceptable, even if we all said "ok fine gaming is to be a sausage fest for all time", do you really think the attitudes given voice by these in game messages somehow vanish once the sender puts down the controller and joins the rest of us in the real world?
Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:4, Informative)
Most people probably didn't know know Portal was lead by a woman because it wasn't relevant to the game's success.
Most people probably don't know who the lead developer was on any video game, because that shit doesn't fucking matter to 99.99% of the goddamn population.
It's not because 'misogyny,' or a 'boys club' or '[insert BS label]' - it's because it doesn't matter. We (by which I mean most gamers) aren't buying games because of who made them, we're buying games because we want to play that game.
Now, was this rant misdirected? Perhaps. But I've got to say something, because I'm tired of narcissistic bitches* saying that I'm a bad person for no reason other than the fact that I have a dick and disagree with their philosophies.
* If you're sitting there assuming I am referring to all women as narcissistic bitches, you're exactly the narcissistic bitch I'm talking about. Get over yourself.
Feminism (Score:4, Informative)
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Feminism [merriam-webster.com] (n)
: the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities
Re:I predict (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"Death to Gamers and Long Live Videogames" (Score:5, Informative)
In this thread, the "accusation" is that the accusations against Zoe have truth to them. The accusation takes the form of a comment, not an article in its own right. Your "[citation needed]" post is out of place.
If you're curious about it, look it up. If you dispute it, dispute it. This is a website where people comment about the article, and often about things completely unrelated to the article. Some work on your part is required, the comment thread isn't a place for you to whine about not being spoon-fed. For your [citation needed] comment to be taken at all seriously, you have to at least add that you searched for it and couldn't find it, so you don't believe it's true without more work on OP's part, thus [citation needed].
As it turns out I was curious about the accusation as well so I searched for some more information. Took me about 10 seconds to find some interesting things:
http://www.escapistmagazine.co... [escapistmagazine.com]
http://thezoepost.wordpress.co... [wordpress.com]
http://imgur.com/a/4VOcx [imgur.com]
http://pastebin.com/Ph22THkJ [pastebin.com]
Re:I predict (Score:4, Informative)
Misogyny isn't the right word, but objectification probably is. The entertainment industry is really shallow that way, and I'm saying that as someone that has worked professionally in both music and game programming/game music (I've also done game art and 2d and 3d modeling, but I probably couldn't cut it there in modern games - it didn't take as much talent in the 1990s). I lobbied to have female characters in one of the games I worked on and was mocked and told by the owner that there was no market for that (and all I really asked for was ONE female character NAME in that game, which was a driving game - incidentally, someone modded them in later). I also have a friend in TV and that industry isn't much better, and he is probably the best example of that (for years behind his back my friends joked of him as our male slut friend, but he finally settled down with a long term girlfriend and even moved in with her and sold his bachelor pad, which he refused to do with the other two fairly long relationships he had).
Re:Accusations (Score:5, Informative)
TFA points out that the journalist in question never actually wrote a review of Depression Quest. If you can find one send them a link so they can add a correction to their article. Google doesn't turn up anything.
Re:One bad apple spoils the barrel (Score:2, Informative)
Are you angry at specific people, or a class of people? The people who abused you, was it a particular skin color, sex, age?
When is it OK to blame other people than the ones who did it, on account of such characteristics? Always, never, or sometimes? If sometimes, which characteristics are OK to generalize over, and which aren't?
Ps. Zoe's ex accused her of being horribly emotionally abusive, cheating on him with five guys in the gaming industry and gaslighting him [wikipedia.org] to cover it up. He never said anyone traded sex for reviews, although it's obvious from his (heavily documented) accusations that all the men involved (as well as ZQ) broke a ton of professional ethical rules.
Ideonexus and the Slashdot editors are playing social justice telephone.
Re:False accusations? (Score:2, Informative)
If it were true you should be able to provide a link to the review of her game written by the guy she is supposed to have slept with. Nothing can ever be erased from the internet and every cache/archive. You can't because it doesn't exist.
Beyond that, her private life is just that, private. It has no baring on her professional work.
Re:Not you too slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
Well, here's the other side..
zoe's then-boyfriend's account
http://thezoepost.wordpress.co... [wordpress.com]
wizardchan's experience with zoe
http://imgur.com/a/4VOcx [imgur.com]
the birth of 4chan's 'vivian james' and zoe's attack on the fine young capitalists
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/... [knowyourmeme.com]
david jaffe vs kotaku
http://kotaku.com/5883107/does... [kotaku.com]
https://soundcloud.com/ben-kuc... [soundcloud.com]
anita sarkeesian is not a gamer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
anita sarkeesian misrepresents the subject material. 'thunderf00t's analysis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This is an issue of journalistic integrity and quite possibly attempts at reculturing a community to conform to specific political values. The charge of 'misogyny' is just an attempt to muddy the waters and/or poison the well of any would-be critics.
Re:Feminism (Score:3, Informative)
No, it's called individual rights when you think that everyone should have equal rights regardless of sex, race, physical traits, or anything besides the mere fact you're human.
It's called feminism when you believe women should have the same rights as men, and not necessarily the other way around - an obsolete position at best, an appalling contradiction at worst.
Re:Why "SJW"? (Score:4, Informative)
This is a story about feminists labeling an entire group of people misogynists.
Can you point out exactly where that was said? I have read quite a few of these articles and watch many of the videos, and I didn't see anywhere that labelled gamers are a whole misogynists. In fact, Sarkeesian's videos are at pains to avoid labelling the developers as misogynists, pointing out that most of the problems are not malicious but simply due to poor design or writing and a lack of awareness.