The latest super happy fun circling the #GamerGate hashtag is that there are those among them who are dancing a jig because professionals have admitted that the flash mobs circling the hashtag have made it harder for archivists and social scientists to research the field of gaming.
Hey, dipshits, having clean and impartial research of gaming is actually good for gaming.
- It has been instrumental in, for example, countering the lies and hyperbole from people like Jack Thompson, who were literally making shit up in hopes of shutting down or suing major studios and making a buck for themselves in the process.
- It turns out that research is pretty handy at making better games.
I realize that going anti-academia is all the rage now, but seriously, screw people who hope that hiding our history and stunting research in this pivotal field of art somehow benefits game developers or gamers.
Transparency in any field of research is important.
It goes back to the infographic I posted before from ‘Compund Interest’, I linked to just the image before, I should have linked to the article page it came from(http://www.compoundchem.com/2014/04/02/a-rough-guide-to-spotting-bad-science/) as that mentions an important point. Most people will get their information from second hand sources that do not link to the original research. Even if there is a link to the research it is likely to be behind a pay wall for those outside an academic institution (This smarts even more in the UK as that paywall sits between the public and publically funded research).
It makes it very difficult to overcome Confirmation bias and more likely to induce a Backfire Effect as people seek to justify their initial stance. It is a fact of life that people are far from rational 😉
Ben Goldacre (http://www.badscience.net/) is a promoter of good research, primarily in medical (he is after all a doctor) but good methods of evidence based research hold true for other fields as well (education, politics, gaming 😉 ) his books are easy to read and highlight the hazards of not linking to the original source. Any of his books are worth a read, while the first two have obvious links to medicine the third and most recent is a collection of his writings primarily from his time as a ‘Guardian’ columnist.
‘Bad Science’ (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Science-Ben-Goldacre/dp/000728487X/)
‘Bad Pharma’ (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Pharma-How-Medicine-Broken/dp/000749808X/)
‘I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.’ (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Think-Youll-Find-More-Complicated/dp/0007462484/)
Another favourite of mine to reach for is ‘Irrationality’ by Stuart Sutherland (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Irrationality-enemy-within-Ben-Goldacre/dp/1780660251/) the latest edition of which coincidentally has a foreword by Ben Goldacre. First published back in 1991 it was written towards the end of Stuart Sutherlands career in psychology and looks into the ways in which irrational behaviour is almost a default setting.
Its hard to take this seriously when games have been archived and studied for years before GG and still are being archived.
That’s not even taking account the plethora of emulation and the like out there. This “Archive” just sounds like a scare tactic.
“Stop saying what I don’t like or game academia will end forever.”
Yeah sure buddy.
This is a more nuanced response than “academia doesn’t want to do games anymore, ‘awesome!'” Which is what the quoted tweet said. That’s not awesome. No suggestion of archival being threatened by GG is “awesome”. It’s bad.