GamerGate followers have decided to brigade the #GDC2015 twitter tag with their usual hysteria, disregard for threatened women, nutball conspiracy theories, unsubstantiated attacks on IGF, unrelated bullshit attacks on ‘SJWs’ unrelated to gaming, ad hominem attacks on those attempting to help expand gaming markets and generally appalling bullshit. Because that’s totally way to win a skeptical audience of game developers to your side.
Central to this effort was Mark ‘totally not a gamergator’ Kern. Congratulations, Mark! You’ve managed to torch the communications efforts of the flagship development conference of your industry!
So we owned the GDC2015 tag today to raise awareness, that was good. The conv. are already starting and will go through GDC. Give em room.
— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 3, 2015
Too late, Mark realized his mistake and started to try to misaim his wrath at games journalists, which as mentioned before, is him completely missing the point of the last six months. While game developers continue to be harassed by this contingent (including no small amount of shit thrown at Zoe Quinn – a GAME DEVELOPER who spoke today), Mark continues to enjoy the internet fame that comes from providing cover to this brigading. (UPDATE: late drunken reporting gave a bad link. However, there were several non-factual takedowns posted with this being one example. Old link left unchanged).
You can use this one instead, targeted more to intended audience: #GDCPRESS
— Mark Kern (@Grummz) March 3, 2015
Too late, Mark. Too late. And incidentally,still incredibly thoughtless for the people who are just trying to do their jobs. And it does nothing to address the actual issue – the harassment that many developers feel – especially women – caused by overly aggressive jerks piling onto them. You know, harassment like the tweets you encouraged and enabled today being aimed at what should be one of the most joyous weeks in the year for most game developers.
I’ll answer this, @Grummz – most of the female devs in my list are afraid of speaking up not because of the press, but because of harassers. — Damion Schubert (@ZenOfDesign) March 2, 2015
Developers who would like for this tag to be functional and useful again may want to consider the use of GoodGamerAutoblocker. I have been told by multiple other developers now (none of which who were using the tool on Sunday) that it’s been quite effective.
And for those of you who claim the block bot is censorship, freedom of speech doesn’t mean the audience has to listen to whatever the fuck is coming out of your mouth. The people who have done so have heard your pitch and decided, for whatever reason, that they don’t like what #gamergate is selling.
Um, this text links to this tweet: https://twitter.com/Eldritchlove/status/572503495460298752 If you actually look at the image linked in the Tweet, it was not about Zoe Quinn, but was instead about about Gone Home composer Chris Remo and Polygon reviewer Daniella Riendeau: http://imgur.com/71PXPEp
That’s my bad, I fat fingered a link last night. Correction added to article.
I hope nobody got triggered.
TBH, I don’t get Mark Kern. His own revised petition even provides an example which demonstrates that he knows there is an issue with women being harassed. Does he really think the gaming press caused that issue too?
I mean, how hard is it to understand the “shooting the messenger” concept that he is employing? Or is this really a matter of the gaming press shedding light (fairly or unfairly) on his problems at Red 5? He seems smart enough, so I can’t help but think there is something else going on that is causing this major disconnect with reality for him.
You make the same mistake as everyone else by assuming this was some monolithic effort.
I apologize for my two tweets. I was asking for information on how the current gatekeepers for indie devs have been troublesome to individuals. Anyone else’s apologies must be their own. There are thousands of us, so I wouldn’t hold your breath.
This blog post is way overblown. No one I’ve talked to this week at GDC has mentioned the GDC tag, much less complained about who is posting on it.
If anything GDC has reminded me how much a storm in a teacup all this nonsense is. The people I’ve talked to about the gaming press at previous GDC’s have always been fairly negative to them and it hasn’t changed this year.