Actually, none of it really was, because it never really actually is. But it does highlight that ActuallyEthics is my new favorite Tumblr.
This developer tells GamerGate that “You are Not My Shield.”
So yeah — I have no respect for this stuff. Speaking for myself — please do not ever get in the way of any criticism, no matter how stupid, that a developer of a game may want to hear. Do not be our shield or our earmuffs: fuck that. Some developers may disagree with me. They may say “no, I don’t want to hear that stuff, it enrages me and makes it harder for me to make my games!” You know what? I have a big old side-eye for those devs. Plug your ears, if you can’t handle it, if hearing a criticism is going to blow your shaky creative vision out of the water. Stay offline. We get death threats for adjusting sniper rifle firing time; the threat is not worth hearing, but “I hate this nerf” is, and how much more so is “the way women look in your game makes me uncomfortable” if someone feels that?
David Gaider asks a super relevant question (and makes me ask why neither he nor his coworker were on my twitter feed previously, while simultaneously being very proud to be a fellow BioWarean):
“But she’s cherry-picking her evidence!” “Her views are biased!” “Everything about those videos is garbage, and she needs to be stopped!” Okay. Let’s pretend for a moment that, for those of you who feel this way, you’re absolutely right. My question is this:
Why the fuck do you even care?
Is there such a profound shortage of shitty opinions on YouTube or elsewhere on the Internet that the appearance of this one constitutes a crime in the making? Have you asked yourself why it’s this particular opinion that drives you up the goddamned wall? What do you tell yourself, if and when you stop for that moment of introspection?
Andrew Sullivan (one of my favorite political writers) tries to write about Gamergate, and doesn’t nail all of the facts (not unexpected given how twisted and complicated the situation is). But what is interesting to me is that he managed to write the whole piece without talking about journalistic ethics at all. To him, it’s about the gamer culture defending themselves from far-left criticism, and whether ‘bullying’ is going both ways. Interesting questions, but not as interesting as the fact that, after researching the issue, he could criticize the issue without mentioning ‘ethics’, ‘integrity’ or ‘games journalism’ speaks very loudly to how little there is there in terms of what the cause is supposedly about.
Second, there’s a missing piece of logic, so far as I have managed to discern, in the gamergate campaign. The argument seems to be that some feminists are attempting to police or control a hyper-male culture of violence, speed, competition and boobage. And in so far as that might be the case, my sympathies do indeed lie with the gamers. The creeping misandry in a lot of current debates – see “Affirmative Consent” and “Check Your Privilege” – and the easy prejudices that define white and male and young as suspect identities (because sexism!) rightly offend many men (and women).
There’s an atmosphere in which it has somehow become problematic to have a classic white, straight male identity, and a lot that goes with it. I’m not really a part of that general culture – indifferent to boobage, as I am, and bored by violence. But I don’t see why it cannot have a place in the world. I believe in the flourishing of all sorts of cultures and subcultures and have long been repulsed by the nannies and busybodies who want to police them – whether from the social right or the feminist left.
Lastly, certainly prompted by my criticism a couple of nights ago, IGN finally took a stand against the ‘recent unpleasantness’. It was literally so careful and safe that some Gamergaters think that IGN took their side. But given I picked on them a couple days ago, I thought it warranted a followup.
In grappling with this story, we’ve reached beyond the content team at IGN, discussing it with other departments, those employed in other areas of the industry, some of whom have been personally affected by the events of the last few weeks. Not surprisingly, the issue has proven just as contentious outside of our walls as within. Some in the industry have praised our reluctance to devote editorial space to this issue; others at the opposite side have called us cowards and worse.
Finale. #germergoat pic.twitter.com/UQ8dFvitrB
— Patrick Alexander (@zpxlng) October 24, 2014
“Why the fuck do you even care?”
This is such a silly question.
First, the answer is extremely obvious. (“She is getting a lot of traction espousing opinions we don’t agree with in our area of interest.”)
Second, why does he care that other people care? Why even bother expending the calories to ask other people why they care? Why do you care about GamerGate? There’s nothing else going on the world that’s more pressing? No other stupid shit happening on earth? Why does Anita care about sexism in games? Is there a profound shortage of sexism outside of video games? Why do you care enough about what I’m writing to reply? Why do I care enough to write this?
“Why does Anita care about games, aren’t there bigger feminist issues?” is an objection some people actually make. I guess that objection is valid? (Spoiler: it isn’t, that’s a stupid objection)
Why does anyone care about anything in life other than the single most important thing?
—
I struggle to see how Anita’s criticism is a fine thing but how criticism of her work is literally ruining video games. (Talk about melodrama! Nothing is ruining video games, get a grip people)
This is sadly an extremely common view among cultural critics – the belief that their criticism is essential but that criticism of their criticism should be off the table.
Anita has every right to point out what she sees as issues with Bayonetta, and everyone else has every right to point out that she didn’t understand what Bayonetta is about, her video is full of major factual errors and the entire game seems to have sailed way over her head, to the point where it’s hard to believe she played it.
If her criticism is fair game then so is that criticism. Death threats are not ok, harassment is not ok, but if we’re going to agree that criticism is valuable it makes no sense to add a bunch of asterisks to that.
There’s a weird sexist strain of thought that says that criticizing women or their work is not ok. I guess because women are not very intelligent, generally pretty helpless and prone to the vapors? Women are so emotionally fragile that if someone accuses them of cherry-picking they break down in tears?
“But she’s cherry-picking her evidence!” is a perfectly fine objection to level against a man. Nobody would bat an eye at that. So why isn’t it fine to level against a woman?
Here’s a novel idea: criticizing work you find problematic is ok, and in turn people criticizing the problematic aspects in your work is also ok. Unless the criticism crosses into harassment, personal attacks, censorship, etc, it’s all fair game.
Even if you’re a girl!
My sister is currently applying for tenure at a major university. Girls aren’t intellectual and emotional lightweights who have to be protected from rational, completely valid objections lest they suffer fainting spells.
The sad part about this particular piece is that Anita handles criticism fine. (If you consider completely ignoring criticism to be fine handling) She doesn’t need a big strong man to tell people to leave her alone when it comes to rational criticism.
First, the answer is extremely obvious. (“She is getting a lot of traction espousing opinions we don’t agree with in our area of interest.”)
No, that isn’t it. Plenty of people have offered opinions that were far more anti-gamer than anything Sarkeesian ever said, and they did so from positions of influence far greater than Sarkeesian–from government offices and legislative podiums, even.
Not to mention the fact that Sarkeesian would have found only a small fraction of the traction that she has if it weren’t for the vicious campaign of harassment that’s surrounded her from the beginning.
So, no, that’s not the answer. It doesn’t explain the hate campaign against her that’s now been going on for about two years.
“Why do you care about GamerGate? “
You asked that before and people had pretty good answers. The GamerGate hate campaign is hurting our culture.
“I struggle to see how Anita’s criticism is a fine thing but how criticism of her work is literally ruining video games.”
Criticism of criticism is fine. Plenty of anti-gg people disagree with AS. The problem is labeling AS and feminism as illegitimate.
Making a video game about beating Sarkeesian up is not criticism of her criticism. Trying to prove that she’s not a gamer is not criticism. Accusing Quinn of trading sex for reviews is not criticism. The bizarre search for a DiGRA conspiracy is not criticism. The insistence on “objective reviews” is not criticism. It’s not saying “that opinion is wrong, here is why”, it’s saying “that opinion is illegitimate, this activist campaign will not cease until either you stop talking or people stop listening to you”.
“Criticism of criticism is fine.”
Not according to the piece Damion linked to.
I’m not responding to some vague soup of ideas about Anita, I’m responding to that piece in particular and the specific points it made. That piece rejects even completely rational criticism, on the basis that people shouldn’t care about offering rational criticism (in this particular case only of course!) and that criticizing a critic is somehow silencing them. (But criticizing a non-critic is not – you figure it out!)
That piece is not about threats and harassment, it’s about how reasonable, everyday criticism is still not ok.
“This is an anti-gg position.”
How can you say that? Do anti-gg guys have some constitution I can read through? Did they all meet and ratify this position?
(This argument should look familiar!)
My position is not anti-gg, it’s anti-irrationalism and anti-sexist. There are plenty of irrational and sexist GG people, and plenty of irrational and sexist anti-GG people as well.
Well, you are definitely not responding to what David Gaidar said.
Every word of that is a lie. No where did Gaidar say or imply any of that. Not once. Note that criticism of Anita Sarkeesian’s videos has appeared on the very blog you are posting comments on.
Here is where Gaidar pinpoints exactly what he’s reacting to:
Ugh, blockquote always bites me in the butt. The blockquote should have ended right after “Everything about those videos is garbage, and she needs to be stopped!”
Do you also want to kno what is not a criticism? “Criticising” Anita Sarkeesian using insults (liar, stupid etc) and farright-wing demagougery (cultural marxist, radical feminist, feminazi etc).
A “critique” by one very popular antifeminist atheist Youtube “skeptic” can say things like (I’m paraphrasing) “I thought Anita Sarkeesian was an evil liar but turns out she is just very stupid” and “Her level of dishonesty begs belief. It really does just beg a belief. Jesus Christ woman, you are a liar without shame.”. This isn’t being critical or being skeptic. And to consider he couldn’t disprove her “background decoration” point, at all…
That sort of abusive “criticism” is obviously wrong.
However “you are cherry-picking to fit your narrative” is not.
Cherrypicking with I think a hundred(more or less)AAA games, showing the usage of female sexuality as background decoration.
The dude in question can also say nothing about “Coldly executed”/”Clasically Executed”/”Shockingly Executed” vs “Beautifully Executed” posters.
Btw, the dude’s name is thunderf00t if you hadn’t already worked it out.
“Here’s a novel idea: criticizing work you find problematic is ok, and in turn people criticizing the problematic aspects in your work is also ok. Unless the criticism crosses into harassment, personal attacks, censorship, etc, it’s all fair game. ”
This is an anti-gg position.
Too bad everything is harassment to them. And criticizing their work is personal attack.
I care about gamergate because right now, a huge number of people, including a lot of game devs and a lot of women, are frightened to engage with a component of gamers. The fact that for the devs, it means their ‘fans’, it implies that something is broken with #gamergate.
If the criticisms of Anita were coming in the form of well-founded criticism with frank, analytical and non-bullshit discussion, I’d have no opinion, or perhaps I’d shred it here. Instead, we get death threats, bomb threats, doxxing, video games of her being punched in the face, attempts to defame her by spoofing her account, victim blaming, people literally saying her boyfriend must be doing it all because she’s not smart enough, and, oh, commentary about the videos that is so bad that you wonder what color paint they appear to be huffing, some of them that go on for literally 4-8 hours.
I’ve criticized Anita’s stuff here, on this very blog. There is a way to do it without being a lying sack of shit or an utter asshole, and move the state of the art forward.
Also, the cherrypicking argument is fucking bullshit.
I enjoy reading criticism, and I welcome it. As someone who generally agrees with much of what Anita has to say, I’ve actually been disappointed by the lack of cogent counter-criticism of Anita’s work. I’d actually love to see a reasoned discussion on it.
Most of what I see, though, is abuse hurled at her; ad hominems and strawmanning. None of those, in my estimation, count as criticism or critique, and I don’t consider it worth my time to pick through them to see if there are any good arguments hidden beneath the bile.
Of course, much of what she says is inarguable: it’s difficult to make the case that Dishonoured does NOT have a woman killed and another kidnapped in the first few minutes, or that Ms Pacman never existed. Clearly that does happen, and clearly she did. Since most of the videos are just giving examples, it seems to be difficult to form a strong counter-argument; the two I’m familiar with are “but other stuff ALSO happens, so what you’re talking about occurs infrequently enough that it really doesn’t matter” (which I disagree with) or “your argument minimizes the freedom and choices available to the player through emergent gameplay” (which I do).
What I would like to see, incidentally, is more of a counterpoint analysis. A Tropes vs Men in Video Games sort of thing. It would be interesting to see analysis of the most common tropes of men used in video games, or even the most common _harmful_ tropes used, if you prefer. The two most frequently brought up in response to Anita’s critiques are the — let’s call them the Cannon Fodder and the God of Sex. (The ‘thousands of men gunned down in games’ and ‘men are sexified too’, respectively.) I’d like to hear more about them, and how they’re handled in games.
On a separate note, now these pro and anti GG dumb-dumbs are apparently filing police reports against each other over “stalking” and other nonsense. (No, not actual stalking) Apparently wasting police time and resources to engage in more Twitter theatrics strikes people as a great idea.
Jesus fuck, imagine being a police officer and getting a bunch of reports from some 20-something spoiled brats complaining that some other 20-something spoiled brat said something mean about them on Twitter.
I’ve also been introduced to the concept of the “accidental doxx.” You can’t make this stuff up.
I think we have to admit that for a lot of people this isn’t about ethics, or harassment, or threats, or principles, or game journalism, or any other noble-sounding thing – it’s people who crave attention using social media to do performance art. Bored white people with more time than sense.
Sorry for spamming, last comment I promise.
I can’t stop giggling. Someone posted an image of a crimestoppers report they filled out. This image has the criminal’s (cough cough) home phone number and address, for “hangouts” the person filling it out listed “twitter.com” and for “gang affiliation” listed “#gamergate”
“Where did you last see suspect?”
“On Twitter.”
These people are ridiculous!
I think really what we’re seeing is the 8chan group behind gamergate going to war with some other anonymous/*chan group who are doing it for the lulz, and basically everyone else is caught in the crossfire, trying to protect themselves from being Doxed or otherwise harassed.
In this particular case that is not what is happening at all.
A person sympathetic to ZQ decided to file false police reports and encourage other people to do the same. As far as I can tell that has nothing to do with 8chan or third party trolls.
You’re doing the “it must be a false flag / outside trolls/ self-doxxing” conspiracy theory thing!
There are a lot of idiotic trolls doing it for the lulz, but not in this particular case.
Maybe you aren’t familiar with this incident – I don’t want to link to it, both because it doxxes someone and I suspect the dumb-dumb filing the police reports is now getting heaps of abuse as well.
https://twitter.com/All_Holes/status/521376868579422208
GNAA have been trying to make GG look bad. Here are your third party trolls.
GNAA, Terifax and Bill Waggoner are the names I keep seeing pop up. But don’t worry, GG is doing plenty on their own side to make themselves look bad too.
Also on the subject on radical feminism, I can’t verify sources ATM, but seems that this year Germaine Greer said: “We’ve gone as far as we can with this equality nonsense. It was always a fraud!”
Those are the forces we are fighting against.
But i thought it was about
~ethics in game journalism~
or something.
Now it is about second wave feminists who don’t even mention videogames? Are we going to have Solanas mentioned next? I know that her ghost still makes internet tuffguyz write the most ballsless whineposts imaginable.
If you consider Sarkeesian a radfem, have my hearty laugh.
You folks are digging your own hole way too fast, the third party shit-steeres only provide you with spades.
You are just a flamebaiter. Also, I’m NOT part of GamerGate.
“Those are the forces we are fighting against.”
“Also, I’m NOT part of GamerGate.”
Ah okay. Shit, you’re probably a real feminist fighting against those bad feminists.
Also:
“but seems that this year Germaine Greer said: “We’ve gone as far as we can with this equality nonsense. It was always a fraud!” ”
“You are just a flamebaiter.”
It seems you are the flamebaiter when you post a quote that is so out of context. (see below comment by Dedj)
No one is “part of” Gamergate. Gamergate has no membership. It is a hashtag, with an amorphous mob behind it.
GNAA might as well be part of Gamergate, because it’s doing what everyone else is doing at this point: Using it as a convenient excuse for attention, and to create more noise and chaos.
“Those are the forces we are fighting against.”
Well, why?
The video is trivially easy to find and the quote is only a few minutes in.
In it, Greer was expressly tackling a definition of gender equality that conflates a roughly equal split of male and female CEO’s/Board members/Executives with ‘gender equality’. She also tackled the equal pay fallacy and the female politicians fallacy.
She was tackling the notion of what we define as equality as being the delusion. What she was not doing was making any form of statement that feminism is secretly about something other than seeking equality , which is how her comment has been quote-mined and cherrypicked by critics of feminism.
Thank you so much for speaking up. Calling out disinformation like that out-of-context smear of Greer is important.
I will defend the rigth to disagree with me for anyone. When you try to take that rigth from me you will have a hell of a problem.
The faux-outrage and the constant trying to appropriate social justice language is what gets me about Gamergate. Every time.
I would have thought SJWs have a patent on faux-outrage.
Someone should contact Salon.com and tell them GG is cribbing their schtick!
Feminists genuinely believe what they are saying. Unlike Gamergaters rhetoric. For example, Zoe Quinn says that 8channers are emotional toddlers, some GGer shows a picture of the disabled developer and says “He isn’t a toddler, he is a man!” Like lol.
Or, for example 4chan starts shit like #EndFathersDay, #CutForBieber and #KillAllMen using sockpuppets. When people are skeptical of #NotYourShield(there were a couple of socks there too, btw.), suddenly it’s “OMG, you tried to erase my identity, SJWs are the real racists.”
It’s obvious they don’t believe what they are saying and it’s even amusing to me, but it’s also fucked up in that it shows me and others there isn’t really a very mature opposing side. Not really worth talking to, just needs to be opposed and disowned.
I really liked IGN’s response. Is it overly safe? Maybe, but given how, well, passionate people seem to get over the slightest perception of one-sidedness I think it’s what we really need atm.