Just a few random snippets.
Radio Nero
I will be appearing on Episode 3 of Radio Nero tonight. The topic of discussion will be on the idea that #gamergate members should form a consumer advocacy group. You can read about the original proposal here and but be sure to also read the clarifying statement here.
For what it’s worth, I’m withholding final judgment until the interview airs, but Milo was a very gracious and accommodating host in the interview, and he bent over backwards to be fair and let me air my point of view. Given that I’ve been, let’s just say, pretty harsh, critical and perhaps a tad unfair to him in the past, I will say that he was more than fair to me in response, and has earned a great deal of respect from me in his attempt to forge some sort of outreach. I do think that outreach is crucial to getting the industry out of this quagmire.
As with everything I write on this blog, all opinions stated in my interview with Milo are mine and my own, and should not be interpreted as speaking for Electronic Arts, BioWare, our partners at LucasArts or Disney, or any other game developers, pro- or anti-gamer gaters, other human beings, or small fuzzy animals. I am a unique and beautiful snowflake, I don’t claim a side, and these thoughts are my own.
Blog Cleanup
Because my WordPress template sucks, it was hard to go back and find articles beyond the most recent five. I’ve fixed that in the short term by adding a GamerGate category, allowing you to easily scan everything written during the recent catastrofuck. I’ve also added ‘more’ tags so this would load faster. I’ve also cleaned up some minor typos and other stuff, but in no case have I changed or altered anything in a way I consider meaningful (which means mistakes I’ve made in judgment or fact are still there to be found).
Quick Hits
Today is one of those days where there were a lot of little stories around #gamergate, and having a full-time job makes it impossible to really engage them. Here’s a backlist of shit I wish I had more time to talk about in more detail.
- I don’t care what side you’re on, if you are comparing your opponents to ISIS, you are probably an asshole, and you damn well better do so in a forum other than Twitter, so that you can explain how you came to such an assholish point of view. The fact that this has alienated relative moderate TotalBiscuit is probably a big deal. (TB has 351K twitter followers and routinely gets 6 figure views on his youtube videos).
- On the flip side, these two unverified tweets suggest what I already suspected: that Intel didnt know what they were stepping into and now regret doing it.
Just met with my @intel contact, who assured me the dept that pulled @gamasutra ads was not familiar with games or #gamergate at the time.
— ken wong (@kenwongart) October 6, 2014
They regret the whole thing. Current ad campaign won’t be reinstated, but he hinted @intel will work with @gamasutra again in the future. — ken wong (@kenwongart) October 6, 2014
- I haven’t publicised it because I didn’t want to overshadow the Radio Show tonight, but my blog post last night talks about the inherent anti-feminism in #Operation Digging DiGRA, and in Syrian Girl’s tinfoil gamergate rantings on Alex Jones.
- “Voice For Men” lunatic Janet Bloomfield tried to get #gamergaters to froth at the mouth and smear Anita Sarkeesian with a fake tweet that has 218 characters.
- Jimquisition has something to say that actually IS about journalistic ethics and Shadows of Mordor, which he describes as “Grade A Fuckshittery”. Can we have more anger about shit like THIS instead of bullshit about SJW issues please?
- In related news, #gamergate villain Leigh Alexander wrote a very good list of Actual Ethical Concerns in the games industry.
- Tonight I plan to write about Journalism Ethics and bad ideas in exposing them.
- The Verge makes a decent attempt to describe the current history of Gamergate neutrally.
- This makes me laugh.
- This is what Objective Reviews would look like. Answer: they’d be useless.
- Someone wrote a new manifesto for Gamergate called “no objectives, no goals, no demands, no philosophies, no lists.” It then presents its philosophy in the form of a list, and then convincingly makes the argument that there’s no good reason I should try to ever engage with people with this philosophy.
- This is actually a very nice anti-gamergate piece entitled “Why Bother with #Gamergate?”
- This is actually a very nice pro-gamergate piece entitled Amnesia.
- Just to note, this is the guy who kicked us off into crazy -gate land.
The precise moment when Gamergoat dudes realised they picked the wrong horse. pic.twitter.com/4Tnneq9SOn
— David Rayfield (@RaygunBrown) October 4, 2014
Yeah comparing the other side to ISIS is like comparing them to Hitler or Stalin, unless they’re killing people you’re an asshole.
Saw that tweet that was obviously too long, had a good laugh about that poor frame job.
The person who runs that objective review site even says it’s not a good idea to strive for 100% objective reviews.
And that guy claiming to work for twitter only for an actual employee to call him out is the best thing to come out of GG.
The objective reviews site is clearly a parody, a piece of performance art extraordinaire.
Yeah, it is. It was started by an Idle Thumbs forum member.
After all the harassment that’s been going on on both sides, one tasteless comparison is enough to put TB into the GG camp? I’ve kind of suspected he’s been moving in that direction from the start. Because, you know, corruption only exists on web sites, not YouTube.
“No objectives, no goals, no demands, no philosophies, no lists” actually makes sense if your goal is to replace or eliminate the establishment rather than eliminate it. Make an alternative set of GG-branded or sympathetic media.
“rather than eliminate it” should be “rather than reform it”. Basically, if the point of your protest is to attack the very legitimacy of the entity you protest against, there isn’t any point making demands.
I think he’s always been leaning in that direction, but he’s pretty well intellectually grounded. I named him as a potential founding father of a GAMR-like organization because he WAS moderate, yet still very respected by that crowd.
The issue here that is really frightening is not that an employee of an involved company said something that was incredibly stupid or unaware – that happens daily. What happened today is that it’s the second time in less than a week that someone outside of the holy triumvirate of media-gamer-dev did so. It’s like a new front in the war of eternal stupid, and the hardware companies are just blundering their way in unaware of how they’re just mixing tremendously and yet almost entirely accidentally. It’s making things a lot more volatile.
No it’s not just one tasteless comparison.
We had more or less the same comparison before from people (namely Devin Faraci) and TB has warned in his Twitter against some youtubers seemingly taking money for their reviews and how he thought that was wrong.
And in nearly every matter brought up he pointed out that it wasn’t as big as people made it out to be (e.g. when people wanted to rile him by pointing at the small shot journos took at him in their mailing list) and people should stay more level headed.
So you either are uninformed or you should check your compass ‘n’ map to see how far you’re off a middleground.
I think that if I had to make an argument, it would be that the Dell thing is bad because it means that the #gamergate shaming is reaching outside of the existing press/anti/pro structure. Which, one could argue, means that the press is being successful with their spin.
I don’t know if I’d *buy* that argument.
I don’t really know what you’re trying to adress here?
If that was direct towards my ‘middle ground’ argument, i really just wanted to adress acting as if TotalBiscuit wasn’t mostly acting reasonable and moderate.
Other than that i see in the Dell guy another one who needs to be taught a thing or two about PR. I mean i’m not much into Social Media nor PR, but i can’t think of that being something reasonable to do. And as i said time and time before, i think we could have dodged a lot by not having a dozen articles about how gamers are dead within a day.
GG’s nebulous, I’ve argued people with diametrically opposed views on GG are in the movement.
Totalbiscuit has a history of rallying very strongly against anyone who attempts to tar gamers with a wide brush, I remember he did it back in the wcradio days. He was talking about a program on tv which came to the conclusion that if you played games for number of hours, you were just a weirdo.
I recall him talking about the stereotypes, “You have bad personal hygiene” before rejecting it and saying “no, you are gamers”. So he feels strongly about that.
Why would it pull him into GG? Because he believes the press have reneged on their “mandate” of representing gamers’ interests and instead have put forward what I can only describe as a “one-sided demonising narrative”. Is that narrative utterly off-base? Of course not, but it *has* been one-sided, unimpressive and wont to alienate.
A second possible reason he’s got involved in this is that when he sent out that incredibly neutral twitlonger that primarily appealed for calm and pointed to the fact nothing was proven, lots of people turned on him. When people are actively demonising you for saying nothing particularly egregious, it’s not surprising he’d get sick of it.
Frankly, someone like TotalBiscuit being involved is, in my opinion, a good thing rather than a bad thing. He’s well respected by much of GG but is also intellectually capable and honest, he may have the ability to help bring toxicity down and focus the issues (such as all the participants in Kain’s stream helped with imo.)
Of course, all of this is ancilliary to the more pressing issue, which is his surgery and I think everyone would prefer he focus on that and would wish him all the best.
Yeah, “incredibly neutral” is a good way to put it, it was incredible to me that any decent person would be neutral in the face of the invasion of privacy and smearing that Zoe Quinn was facing in those videos.
It’s not that Bain support harassment. It’s that in the face of his priorities (DMCA claims he disagrees with, people saying mean things about the gamer identity) he’s neutral towards it.
But he’s big enough and smart enough that he has some incentive to maintain an appearance of respectability (which is why he had to wait for an excuse like this) so, yeah, I do agree that TB in GG might be a good thing.
With all due respect, I’d argue you’re ascribing motivations to him with terms like “which is why he had to wait for an excuse like this”. I am unconvinced there is any evidence that TB has been acting callously, nor is there evidence of malicious political planning on his part. His reaction when he saw the tweet seemed completely human and understandable.
His twitlonger did nothing but state facts. He pointed out that DMCAs to censor are wrong (factually true) he also defended ZQ by saying it was *not* proven she did it (also factually true.) I argue he in no way contributed to harassment, and put forward an argument that many seemed to have missed.These are good things.
There was, I would strongly argue, on the basis of that twitlonger, no logical reason for anyone to “turn on” him. I would argue such a thing, if it did indeed happen, is indicative of why this whole mess became what it is.
It goes back to this idea of demonising people by claiming they support/condone criminal activity b/c they didn’t explicitly condemn it. I find such an approach to discourse to be unintuitive, ridiculous, and conducive to toxicity.
“DMCAs to censor are wrong (factually true)”
With all due respect, here’s an actual fact: that is not a factual claim and therefore cannot be factually true. It’s a normative claim. It’s an “ought”, not an “is”.
Do I have a problem with Quinn making that DMCA claim, if she did? It wasn’t a smart idea, but it’s not categorically immoral to make DMCA claims when your motivation is privacy rather than preserving the value of intellectual property. It’s just a strange fact about the US legal system that it offers way, way more protection to intellectual property than it does for the privacy of human beings. That’s what celebrities use to “censor” their leaked photos–DMCA takedowns. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/29/solace-oblivion
The only problem I have with this DMCA claim was that it wasn’t really plausible. But do I think significantly less of someone for filing an invalid DMCA claim on a video that invades their privacy and smears them the way that video did Quinn? No, I don’t, and I question the judgment and priorities of anyone who would.
Or to put it another way, TotalBiscuit wasn’t particularly interested in understanding someone else’s “completely human and understandable” reaction in that twitlonger.
For better or for worse, those of us who have found ourselves somewhat in the middle (TotalBiscuit, Raph Koster, myself) have felt a strong need to maintain a level of relative neutrality, because you need people who have some measured level of respect and objectivity if you want to actually forge a dialogue.
It’s a huge part of the reason why my blog went decidedly less ranty a couple weeks ago.
That…makes sense, actually. Starting to regret some of posts just now.
@28 minutes, you just injected a lot of harassment that had nothing to do with #gamergate, or even press/devs.
Smedly bomb threat was totally irrelevant. Swatting was happening to streamers, not press/devs.
Just be honest; the press picked up on the harassment to deflect criticism, the same way Anita did. Sshe has yet to respond to any rebuttals — because she really has no response.
When Jack Thompson had rape and death threats, there was no deflection (and in fact Kotaku even declined to remove death threats from their own comments at Jack Thompson’s request).
To you guys, sure. However, you have to understand that THIS IS THE ENVIRONMENT OF FEAR that was around the birth of #Gamergate. THIS is why devs and press were terrified. THIS is why all these games journalists felt the need to go out and tell gamers to ‘chill out’. And so when people who DON’T follow the intricacies on KotakuinAction every day and only remember what happened the week of August 28th, and then they see someone try to claim that ‘#gamergate doesn’t harass’, it makes that person look utterly detached from reality.
But the anita and zoe harassment continues to this day, and came directly from the Five Guys crowd and morphed into the pro-#gamergate. I can tell you decidedly that harassment in this direction happens and is not infrequent. When someone tries to claim that ‘#gamergate doesn’t harass TODAY’, it makes that person look utterly detached from reality.
If Kotaku declined to remove death threats of anyone, even fucking Jack Thompson (who I despise), they were in the wrong.
I agree with your point that Milo was off-base with whatever he said about the harassment being one way.
But really, swatting was on the mind of the press? I feel like you just hurled out the first few things you could think of.
re: Kotaku, it’s easy to acknowledge sins of the past, but that doesn’t address the gorilla in the room. Why the difference?
Also, I’d like to point out that just because Anita left her home doesn’t make her threat somehow more serious.
Milo getting syringes sent to his house, Brad Wardell getting death threats, etc. It’s not fair to vilify some one for questioning whether Anita is playing this up (Zoe too says she’s couch surfing for “safety”)
The fact that Quinn or Sarkeesian is suspected of pulling these stunts for publicity or sympathy is directly related to the aspects of gamer culture of viewpoint marginalization they critique.
Here’s where GG supporters of a certain stripe will attempt to claim that no, they are just arguing that death threats against *men* should be covered as widely and condemned as much in the press. I happen to agree. Threatening people online is toxic. Calling SWAT in on people is toxic and utterly illegal. When people commit crimes or harassment of this nature it should be treated equally in the press, and it should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
The problem, again, is that this particular group of people doesn’t stop with “We want equal coverage.” You yourself don’t stop there. You say ” just because Anita left her home doesn’t make her threat somehow more serious” and “Zoe too says she’s couch surfing for “safety”” in scare quotes to make it clear you think this is at best, questionable.
You imply, with your language, that these people are doing it for sympathy or publicity, that the threats they face aren’t really that bad, and that they should just ‘man up.’
Who are you to make that accusation? Who are you to determine when a person does or doesn’t feel threatened, or when a threat is or isn’t credible?
When I was a teenager my family was threatened with violence and possible kidnapping as a result of my father’s job. We knew the threat was low, with a minimal chance of being carried out. Nonetheless, for months, my sister was not allowed to ride her bike outside unaccompanied. My father carried his service weapon — something he didn’t usually do — on an ongoing basis. And when he left town for work, we had to sleep over at the neighbors — just to be on the safe side.
I will never forget lying in bed at the age of 16 and deciding that if someone came through our front door and my father was injured or killed, I would do my best to kill that person. It was not a macho, fake moment. It was the kind of moment you have at 4 AM when you decide that you will try to take a stand on some point of principle even though your chances of success are minimal and you yourself are ill-equipped to do so.
What happened? In the end, nothing, save that the man who made the threats ended up with a longer jail sentence for having made them publicly and in published media.
Despite knowing that the threat was almost certainly false, living with the reality that it might not be left its mark. I remember, nearly 20 years later, what it felt like to jump when the phone rang or to go running outside if my sister decided to break the rules.
Until you (by which I mean, anyone who appoints themselves Threat Response Judge) have lived with the knowledge that someone out there of unknown capabilities and unhinged, vitriolic fury has publicly promised to do harm to you and yours, you don’t get to decide how someone else should or shouldn’t react to it.
“The fact that Quinn or Sarkeesian is suspected of pulling these stunts for publicity or sympathy is directly related to the aspects of gamer culture of viewpoint marginalization they critique.”
Yes that’s how it’s deflected, but I’m asking why so many other people who get these threats don’t flee their homes and link their patreons.
“Until you … have lived with the knowledge that someone out there … has publicly promised to do harm to you and yours, you don’t get to decide how someone else should or shouldn’t react to it.”
In fact I have. As has Milo, Brad Wardell, Jack Thompson, and many others.
Why is it so horrific for me to question their motives when they stir the pot and link their patreons?
Septus,
I can’t seem to reply to your comments in-line (I’m guessing we hit a software limit) so I’ll quote you here:
“but I’m asking why so many other people who get these threats don’t flee their homes and link their patreons…Why is it so horrific for me to question their motives when they stir the pot and link their patreons?”
It’s not horrifying. It’s simply done in profound bad faith. Here’s why:
1). Why is it “stirring the pot” for ZQ or AS to do what others have done? Did you question the motives or responses of the other men you mention? Presumably not. Because they didn’t, in your view, “stir the pot.”
The fact that a man who calls the cops and talks about an experience and what led to it is “just getting the facts out,” while a woman who does so is “stirring the pot” is itself demonstrative of the bad faith nature of the question.
2). It is not your place to determine whether or not a person who leaves their home when threatened is acting appropriately.
Presumably the same authorities to whom these threats were reported issued their own recommendations as to what actions AS and ZQ should take to maximize the safety of themselves and their loved ones. If you have addressed this rather salient fact in other threads I apologize; you have not done so here.
Every misogynist has a litany of “I’m just asking the QUESTION!” while blindly refusing to acknowledge that in different circumstances — namely, when men take actions to discuss threats against their families, or to protect those families, these questions don’t get asked.
If you really have to ask why a woman would feel unsafe enough in her own home when repeatedly threatened with rape and death threats to either reach out to a network of patreons and/or to post about it online, I doubt there are *any* circumstances in which you would judge it appropriate for someone to post about such things. Even had a person made threats in person, I suspect you’d be saying: “That’s just one guy, MOST GUYS AREN’T LIKE THAT” as opposed to considering why the behavior of such individuals is itself demonstrative of the deep problems in how misogynists view women.
I’ll say it again: You, or I, or Damion himself are not the Supreme Judge of what is or is not an appropriate response to a rape or death threat for someone else. The tone and nature of your questions is blatantly and intrinsically biased.
If a man started complaining about harassment while simultaneously linking his patreon to take advantage of sympathy, I would DEFINITELY accuse him of the same. I don’t know what kind of nonsense you’re spinning.
It was VERY much in the minds of everyone in my twitter and facebook feed. Really, you forget what it was like that week. Gamers hit peak asshole. and it wasn’t all gamers. As I mentioned in my first article, it was a small number of fuckwads. And if you were a developer, academic or press member during that period of time, you felt under siege.
It’s very likely that Kotaku has actually gained more journalistic integrity in the last decade. If nothing else, they are under entirely different leadership now, which may have different ethical standards.
Yeah that ISIS tweet. Jeez. I get that people lose their cool but there’s no excuse for hyperbole like that.
It was also pretty awful see Total Biscuit and thousands of others using that tweet as a rallying cry and justification for all of gamergate afterward. “Some Dell guy is a total asshole, so everything we do is to defend the honor of gamers.”
Mr. Schubert,
Congratz on the great interview you had. After reading all of your GG content, it was good to connect a voice to the words I read.
I wrote a LONG post but deleted almost all of it because I really just one question answered….
I am pro gamergate. I jumped on board because this is the only vehicle I have seen that has a chance to actually bring change to games journalism. I have never agreed with the goal of shutting down sites/voices because I think it is inherently wrong and un-American. Except for Kuchera (seriously, fuck him), I don’t think anyone should lose their job. Ultimately, I would like to see reconciliation with the smaller sites with some concessions.
I am still pro-gg because I think a lot of games media sites are rife with anti-gamer and anti-consumer activity. However, I have always seen the larger sites as the biggest offender. I have wished gamergate would focus on the big fish.
Given the recent “Grade-A Fuckshittery” with Middle Earth, how do we dismantle the Goliath? How do we un-hinge big game journo sites from the publishers?
After the Koster AMA, I have read through his/you twitter circles and many mirror the fact that big games publishers control media coverage. How do we actually go after the big guys? Does this really come down to not being able to play DA:3 or other corresponding title this x-mas?
Responding to me really isn’t important, maybe you can address #gg again in Erik Kain’s next panel. After all I have read, I think you are actually pro-gg (given some exceptions). I ask you gather devs/others and help us go after the big guys please.
(Damnit, this is still a big post….I suck at being concise…sorry)
Please don’t boycott my brothers in Edmonton!
Here’s my point – the Jimquisition story is GREAT. I mean, it is evidence of something that actually is totally legitimately fucked up and, if true, should totally be condemned (I’m going to explore it in more detail later).
What will probably happen is a couple days of shouting, because of the lack of organization. If there was an organization, that organization could actually build a structured response. They could demand a statement from every press unit that had a day 1 review as to whether or not they agreed to these demands. They could put pressure on sites to report similar demands in the past. They could demand that future such AAA publisher demands be put someplace on the website as a disclaimer. THey could do all sorts of things. But without an organization to demand something, they’re just going to get a generic sense of anger from the fans, and different fans are going to have different criteria for being satisfied.
It’s not just that, though.
This isn’t the first case of payola in the streamer market, and it won’t be the last, because the publishers have discovered that it works, and there isn’t a consumer backlash (at least not yet).
And yet, despite all the evidence out there of actual corruption, #GamerGate is still fixated on the notion that people in a small industry might actually have a private mailing list to talk to their peers.
Right now we’re in the odd state where *buying* a copy of a game to review it is considered by #GamerGate to be proof of collusion, but being paid by the publisher to review it *and* having them approve the content *and* control what you can say goes on without apparent concern.
Until #GamerGate starts to care about the real corruption going on in real time, I’m going to continue to assume that the claims of “being about Journalistic integrity” are just a smoke screen.
The hilarious thing is how small people think when it comes to collusion or evidence of buyout.
“Buyout” in these contexts typically means “How about we fly you to cover the launch of XXX — and we’ll fly you with an upgrade to first class, an all-expenses five-star hotel room with a 70-inch TV, 5.1 speaker sound system, and we comp all your food, WiFi, and taxi expenses while we do it?”
Less dramatically, sure, “buyout” might mean “We buy $50,000 worth of advertising on your site,” or “We advertise our next three games with you.” That’s why established journalism outlets have (typically) strict rules about the separation of church & state. If you work in content generation, you don’t touch advertising. If you work in advertising, you don’t write content. It’s true that we’ve seen more publications experimenting with paid advertising / content, but that’s a genuine concern — and most websites mark said content as “Sponsored Content.” That’s not a perfect solution and I’m not thrilled with the rise of paid content, but there are established ethical guidelines for dealing with these issues.
Does that mean they always get followed? Of course not. But in this kind of situation, it’s actually much *easier* for a website to sandbox the content than it is for a streamer working via YouTube. If you handle all your own advertising and your own content generation, you’re going to inevitably have an unwanted conflict of interest.
Thank you that you, one of the very few persons with an open mind about gamergate or people who feel associated with the ideas that come out of it now joined in the talk! It´s sad to have respect for that because usualy you earn respect by other things but whatever. It was good that people start to reach out to each other rather then throwing around just dirt!
But let me give you a little example with what I have personaly a problem with in regards to “gaming” culture some specific people wants to establish!
Here it comes (and i am around since 1999 in online play)
are your for gender ? NO,
then you must be a bad gamer ! Realy ? I can play good battlefield 2 and have lots of kills!
Doesnt matter you dont like gender ! hmm…. but what has gender to do with battlefield MP ?
you are a sexist! No.. we have a girl in our Team and she´s pretty good in killing other Teams!
You are a lier and a thief! No, Im not gollum at all!
You are a racist cuz you have no guy from africa in your Team? How do you know that ?
Cuz you dont like gender! Well, but we had one he just wasnt that good in killing other Teams!
See, i told you you are a racist!
You can use gender or feminism in this context it doesnt realy matters because this types of labeling are now common and that is uncool. It´s just that, uncool to have these kind of conversations in gaming. And I´m myself a very open minded person to a lot of things but I have my limits in patience and temper when someone starts to paint me in a way that is not even close to who I realy am.
Kudos for you and the Verge here (or better said Ms. Robertson).
Most important thing to take away from the Verges piece is how it’s no long discussing substantial problems, but a culture war with an added “He said, she said” shit slinging contest on the side.
Don’t agree on Ms. Alexanders piece, as i think it’s adressing a lot of overaching problems in a much to simple view, whereas only ~3 out of her 12 points are really something gamer especially should care about… but well.
And just because of a personal interest as someone who somehow is fascinated by arms, the article she linked is getting it quite backwards. If it was arms manufacturers being so interested in having their weapons in games, the money would flow in the other direction. In the same manner movie makers doig pro american and pro military pictures could always count on getting money for that or getting easy access to military toys without having to pay much…
What’s really interesting about Adam Baldwin seems that he’s idolized by people who are by their own description quite left-wing. Just for standing up for them.
Tells a lot about guidance starved people in #GG.
I just don’t get the ‘Ethics in Games Journalism’ argument that Gamergate are fixated on.
Maybe I’m just too old and removed from the console playing youth of today that seems to expect adverts and gaming magazine articles to be un-biased.
Any industry that has a product that costs a large sum of money to develop and bring to launch has an interest in making sure as many potential purchasers buy their product as possible.
This involves blatant lying, or adverts as they are more commonly known. In the games industry this usually involves ‘non-game footage’ in print media large glossy artistic renditions with very small box ins of actual content; this carries over into the TV/Internet realm with live action trailers or CGI cutscenes (with the obligatory disclaimer ‘not game footage’)
Over optimism, I’ll be honest and say that I think game developers are genuinely caught up in the development of their game that they feel they can deliver, that is dangerously reported in preview articles as it ramps up fanbase expectations, expectations that depending on the product may already be ramped up to near insane levels. This is countered by an overreaction to shut down any comments by developers on an upcoming game so it is covered by rumour and speculation, which in turn also sets up errant expectations. But, it does make it a little easier to push a less than stirling product on a greater audience on day one.
And finally the rather nebulous interface between publishers and journalists when it comes to covering the launch of a new product. It’s been a long time since I’ve purchased a games magazine or looked at an online review site. But, back when I did it was full of games that got surprisingly high reviews (games struggling to get below 80%) or reviews that were more an exercise in the journalists skills of creative writing rather than actually reviewing game content.
If you want to see these practice writ large then go and read ‘Bad Pharma’ by Ben Goldacre, (http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Pharma-Companies-Mislead-Patients/dp/0865478007) it’s about the pharmacy industry and its corrupt practices, which are surprisingly similar to those of the games industry. Especially when it comes to large drug companies using their salesmen and the usual array of flashy promotional gimmickry to promote their product over a generic version. But enough about real life, back to games 😉
One of the stand outs of ‘Bad Pharma’ was the Cochrane Collaboration, an institute that carries out meta-analysis of drug reviews. In gaming circles analogous to Metacritic. Or in basic terms the more separate reviews you have the closer you are able to get to an accurate answer.
I don’t know if Metacritic is held in high regard. But if it does nothing else it helps to gather up all the reviews into one place where you can start to see the critical bias of certain publications. I would focus on the critics tab as the Users tend to be more polarised and with their own inherent bias and ability to be manipulated either by company adherents or those groups with an axe to grind against a publisher.
The only down side of this approach is that you can’t really go out and pre-order. You won’t get a great insight into the product until after the day of release, maybe until a week or two has passed. And this seems to be an incredibly hard barrier to breach. To many of my friends children the importance is in having the product first so they can talk about it at school, brag about their high kill scores.
So I wonder if the consumer hurdle Gamergate really need to confront is the purchasing reality of the games industry. The promos and articles are there to appeal to kids to nag their parents into buying a game, little more than impulse purchase stalls at the checkouts of supermarkets.
And, if that isn’t the case, maybe they could go the extra mile and set up their own review system.
Well,
some people still dont understand that labeling people (who happens to play games) as sexist, mysogonists (sorry I´m german and i dont like that word) and whatnot all ONLY because they pointed out how one “game” (it´s not a game at all and we all know it) in particular (depression quest) could have been greenlighted! This questioning how something so uninspiring and dull (or just plain bad) quickly showed that it were not realy the “gamers” who supported it but people from the outside pulled their strings to make it happen (and yes the evidence is there!). What followed was the questioning who is involved in all this mess and beyond but instead to be just honest NO, they accused everyone of being anti-female aka anti-everything that must be good because he expressed his concern about corruption or at least arrangements…
Till this day no one can explain how this could have happened other then, she did a great game and deserved the attention and you are evil now because she is a female. And to me it´s pretty clear to this day. Some people are not rewarded for their work but what they “bring” with them. I´m not talking about any conspiracy but I think we should get back to judge only games on a gaming perspective. And imo outsiders should be “outside” of gaming and care about their own stuff.
“(it´s not a game at all and we all know it)”
Of course it is. There’s an entire massive genre of games with gameplay just like it.
“in particular (depression quest) could have been greenlighted! This questioning how something so uninspiring and dull (or just plain bad)”
Or perhaps you’re confusing your own personal opinion of Depression Quest for an objective assessment, and other people don’t have the same view of the game that you do.
“people from the outside pulled their strings to make it happen (and yes the evidence is there!).”
Such as?
“Till this day no one can explain how this could have happened other then, she did a great game and deserved the attention”
Er…isn’t that a sufficient reason by itself? Isn’t that, in fact, how Steam Greenlight WORKS?!
I´m designing mods (aka game enhancements since 2001) and no i´m not just a typical dude who has no clue about design and what it takes to create content (I´m modeling and mapping and do textures for over 14 years now). That taste is a personal preference I agree on. Sure thing! And i dont want to trash the person any further as I did in my previous post. I dont have any kind of feelings about her and i dont share feelings most of the time with people on the I-net either. It is just my own thought about “nobodys” knowing people in the media and suddenly go “game design”… huh realy ? did i miss something going on ? You must know that some people know the gaming scene or mod scene from the inside. So i´m fully aware of whos doing what and who is with whom somehow connected. It was a village and in some cased it´s still relevant to know that. Today some modders have decided to go kickstarter, which isnt a good move at all. Today some indy devs seem to think it´s very important to do networking before and right in their process of development.. which isnt a stupid thing but you know, we humans arent perfect and i´m pretty sure many have abandoned the idea of ideal and passion for famous, wealth and to be “someone”. We could talk about that in every detail if you wish 😉
“I´m designing mods (aka game enhancements since 2001) and no i´m not just a typical dude who has no clue about design and what it takes to create content (I´m modeling and mapping and do textures for over 14 years now). That taste is a personal preference I agree on.”
Which is fine, but all that says is you work on a different kind of games in a different way than Quinn. But designing and writing visual novels is just as much “game development” as being a modder. More so, really.
“You must know that some people know the gaming scene or mod scene from the inside. So i´m fully aware of whos doing what and who is with whom somehow connected.”
Gaming is huge and diverse and encompasses a ton of different game styles and genres. If you’re active in the Blender and Unity communities (or whatever), why should you expect that to grant you special insight into, say, the Ren’py or Twine communities?
valid points no question. And no i dont even know these games ? are they games ? But dont you agree that modders (is a very broad term i know that covers almost anything of content creation) are like village idiots at times where gossip spreads as fast as in a real village and some groups within their join Team to enage in contact with devs. and even the media ? Yes they do. I know it, because I did it myself and know what it helped me alot! And i was trying to point out not the speciality of a closed gaming community but the bigger picture of them and how they interact. When someone makes a lot of noise then he/ she must have a reason to do so and if things looks unusual to me then i try to find out whats the motivation or whats the problem.
If you don’t know enough about the community to even know what Ren’py and Twine ARE, how do you know what “looks unusual” in it?
yeah. I dont know anything about your community and i´m happy with that. Pretty happy to say that. And it´s just not possible to talk to someone who was never involved in anything realy or has an overview! Maybe you look around instead of being so narrow minded. If you would have an interest about gaming you would know what im talking about… pixelhit location 😉
I give you an example of a controversy in the modding scene. That was 7sins for the sims1 games. The sims1 modders mostly were the first people who charged you off money via subscribing to their site to get their content. The EULA of maxis sims1 must have been clear about that is must be ok to do so. But yet this trend set forth a phenomenon of modders wanting to cash in for a hobby or a passion which was strictly done for free by gamers for gamers (that was never questioned until some people decided to go full ego). I dont want to write an essay now about these things but believe me that things have changed in terms of money making even in the minds of some semi-professionals i would like to call me and them. If you follow these kind of people into the indy dev scene and their attitudes I cant deny they are the same people.
Uh…you know Depression Quest is free, right?
I think it doesnt makes much sense to talk to you seriously. But thanks for the “reply” or what ever that way 😀 Have fun 🙂
Well, if you don’t want to explain what modders who charge money for their mods to an existing commercial game to “cash in for a hobby or a passion which was strictly done for free by gamers for gamers” has to do with someone creating an original game using freeware that they then release for free, that’s your right, I suppose.
let us agree to disagree on it all together which is ok in a world we live in because we two have such a distance in our viewpoints on things and no one needs a discussion that gives you or me nothing in the end as just text 😉