Zen Of Design

The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Category: Unwanted Political Opinions (Page 1 of 4)

Milo’s Pathetic Two Month Tantrum Reaches the White House

March 5, 2016 /

Milo Yiannopoulous, the pitifully preening thin-skinned neurotic meerkat that has self-styled himself as the Liberace of the Alt Right Movement Dedicated to Preserving the Right for Pathetic Manchildren To Be Abusive Shitheads in between bouts of acting as the Pied Piper of the #GamerGate movement, managed to worm his way into the White House Briefing Room today, where he managed to ask a question.

We live in perilous times.  The economy is being buffeted by Asia, ISIS is still dangerous, and both political parties are in chaos due to unlikely primary challenges.  So what does Milo want to talk about?  Apparently, he is still butthurt about losing his blue checkmark due to his self-admitted, utterly despicable habit of being generally a terrible person to anyone who dares to recognize his awesome brilliance.

Anyway, he just happened to wander into the White House Briefing Room, where he asked a question about how him losing his checkmark showed how conservative free speech rights are UNDER ATTACK!  The clip is amusing partially because the White House Spokesperson clearly thinks its about the stupidest question that’s been asked of him in his tenure herding these cats.

There are, of course, a few observations to make here.

  1. If you ask the leader of the federal government to Orwellianly stop a private company from policing their userbase to their likelihood, then your small government/libertarian credentials are about as authentic as a super secret circle that tells you to drink your Ovaltine.
  2. If you can still post on Twitter, you still have plenty of free speech.  The fact that Milo’s patented brand of abuse of the Twitter platform (and, frankly, of the concept of ethics in journalism entirely) has only cost him this vanity adornment and not gotten him removed from the platform so far is, frankly, a testament to both Twitter’s leniency – or stupidity, if you ask me.
  3. Complaining you lack free speech after having managed to sneak into one of the most exclusive media invites in America, and being able to ask the spokes of the opposition party – when you work for a media outlet who despises this president and virtually everything he stands for – is pretty much the height of being so self-absorbedly out of touch with how your so-called issues conflict with actual reality, it’s a wonder you haven’t taken over a Bird Sanctuary somewhere.

This sort of shit has been flowing fast and fierce from those who have tried to turn Online Abuse into a cause for cultural revolution.  A year after the CEO of Twitter noted that they suck at  dealing with abusive shitheads, Twitter has since gotten more aggressive about banning abusive trolls and obnoxious shithead Neonazis, with said trolls and shitheads insisting that this was about the silencing of the conservative worldview, despite the fact that millions of conservatives can and still post on Twitter.  It turns out the common thread is being a troll or shithead, particularly one that engages in doxing, dogpiling or direct threats.  In short, Twitter is following the most basic rule of community management: people who cost them more money or eyeballs than they grant them are, frankly, bad for business, and Twitter is under no obligation to support the fetid swamp feces that they claim is discourse.

But do go ahead and sue Twitter, Milo.  Because I could sorely use the material.

Is GamerGate Anti-Feminism? Well, Duh

October 2, 2014 /

In the wake of Intel’s unfortunate and (I believe) misguided decision to withdraw their advertising from Gamasutra, I’ve seen some amount of bile aimed at The Verge for their headline: “Intel buckles to anti-feminist campaign by pulling ads from gaming site.”  This has prompted no small number of people in my twitterfeed to erupt in anger.  “Do you really that #gamergate is anti-feminist?” many gamergaters have ranted.

Well, of course it is.
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Ms. Sommers Just Can’t Let It Go

September 26, 2014 /

So it’s been a week since I pointed out that Christina Hoff Sommers logic in her ‘games aren’t sexist’ movie is, like, really, really logically flawed.’  She responded by… I’m not making this up… attacking my spelling.  She also intimated I smeared her while, at the same time, misrepresenting my point enough that a whole bunch of people thought I was calling gamers Nazis and Klansmen. Which was a nifty bit of gold-medal caliber trolling.

But hey, my original argument was a tad emotional and a little abbreviated because, er, I was trying to squeeze in a few Milo slams, but really because the article was more about how this was evidence that SOME people were attempting to hijack #gamergate in order to shut down certain voices in the games industry that are already underrepresented. And, er, she sure isn’t doing anything to disprove THAT point, but whatever.

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Milo’s Sloppy, Biased Video Games Reporting

September 24, 2014 /

Update: October 22nd – Please see this followup, where I address having taken Kotaku’s reporting too uncritically in this instance.

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Update – October 16th: Brad has responded to this article, wherein he demands an apology from me. I welcome any to read his side of the story.  He is particularly vehement that the actual instances of sexual harassment did not occur.  My response:

  1. Harassment is wrong. Anyone who thinks I believe otherwise after reading my work here on any post is not reading the words on the written page correctly.  No one should ever have harassed Brad’s wife or child, ever – or for that matter, Brad himself. If this has happened (and I actually don’t doubt it), the instigators are fuckwads, whether they’r men, women, SJWs, martians, or whatever.
  2. BioWare has nothing to do with my opinions.  As is noted on every page of this blog, I speak only for myself.  Period.  Leave them out of it.
  3. I have added disclaimers to the text below linking to your page, but otherwise left them intact.  I believe that people should be able to read your counter and have it make sense when reading mine.
  4. In my current capacity, I have nothing to do with anyone deleting forum posts on any topic except on this blog. I have no idea why this is brought up.  For what it’s worth, I do not believe any posts to this thread have been deleted – I typically only delete abusive or nonsensical comments.
  5. I am basing the timeframe of their countersuit on this Kotaku article, which states that the countersuit was filed in August of 2012.  They probably used this document to make this case.  If Kotaku corrects the record, or Brad is willing to provide compelling counter-evidence, I am more that happy to publish it here and apologize for this error, and I’ll even condemn Kotaku for shitty journalism.
  6. I am basing the terms of dismissal on this Kotaku article, which claims clearly that the two lawsuits were settled as part of a joint settlement, which despite Brad’s claims, aren’t ‘vindication’ – in fact, the more heinous the employee’s theft of IP was, the more startling it would be that Brad wouldn’t see it to conclusion in court if the sexual harassment case was a nothingburger.  If Kotaku corrects the record, or Brad is willing to provide compelling counter-evidence, I am more that happy to publish it here and apologize for this error, and I’ll even condemn Kotaku for shitty journalism.

All this being said, my central gist, which is that Milo not bringing up the countersuit’s role in this lawsuit evaporating paints an incredibly different version of what occurred. However, if new details challenge this view, I will certainly report them and, if appropriate, apologize.

And I shouldn’t have to mention this again, but harassment is wrong. If anyone reads my rebuttal and thinks I am in favor of or hope to encourage the harassment of anyone, including and especially Brad’s family or Brad himself, then please delete me from your blogroll.

I’ve had some problems with Ben Kuchera’s work in the bast. In fact, not too long ago I wrote an article titled What’s Wrong With Game Journalism, and used as exhibit A Ben’s baffling spin on SimCity delivering a much-desired and much-demanded feature (offline play) as a ‘race to the bottom’. In it, I basically argued that Ben doesn’t know much about the inner technical challenges of making major changes like this, and also slammed him for putting a negative spin on what should be a positive, fan-friendly eventuality. Hell, one of my coworkers has a tumblr that it seems like he only ever updates when he wants to rant about something Ben said.

So yeah, Ben’s not above reproach as a journalist.

That being said, Milo Yiannopoulos makes Kuchera look like fucking Woodward and Bernstein combined. You may remember Milo from my previous piece here where I debunked him and Christina Sommers. I think it probably says something that while my Twitter feed filled up with people mad at me for bashing ‘Based Mom’, no one’s stepping up to defend Milo. This may be due to the fact that he’s the sort of enlightened soul who occasionally lets something repugnant slip, such as in this fantastically hypocritical article where he defines Rockstar as having “Brazen, sociopathic, adolescent attitudes” and then veering into “Personally, I don’t understand grown men wasting their lives playing computer games. It seems a bit sad to me” before concluding “It’s not for me to legislate what weirdos in yellowing underpants get up to in their spare time.”  He also makes it clear that there’s no doubt that video games were a factor in Elliott Rodger going nutballs.

Yes, this is the defender of the poor devs boxed in by political correctness, and the savior of gamers still reeling from a million ‘gamers are dead’ articles.

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No, I Didn’t Say, Or Mean, That Gamers Are Nazis or Klansmen

September 21, 2014 /

TLDR: That’s not what I said, that’s not what I meant, but I apologize that what I wrote could be construed that way. But that doesn’t mean that CHS’s logic is any better.

My friends think it’s pretty funny that I’m now being linked wholeheartedly into the SJW Conspiracy that is in bed with the media and is out to destroy gaming. I’m simply a free speech zealot. I believe firmly in free speech for gamers, game makers, and game journalists. I believe that voices like Anita should be listened to. I also think they can frequently be wrong, or ill-suited for the market. I loudly advocated for Penny Arcade during the dickwolf scandal. I’m usually the one pissing off the feminists by loudly supporting boobplate – if your game is aimed for the right audience. I just simply don’t like people telling me who should be allowed to talk to me about games.

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The Revolution Will Be Tweeted

June 15, 2009 /

Over the weekend, there’s been what tentatively appears to be a stolen election in Iran, followed by protests with estimates of six or seven figures. Sadly, the news networks pretty much ignored the story (at least, up until the New York Times criticized them for doing so).

Top coverage of the event in America, it turns out, has come from the bloggers: Andrew Sullivan on the left, and Hugh Hewitt on the right being good examples (and normally these two are at each other’s throats). Without the bloggers, the issue would be almost invisible to us here in the west. Continue reading

November 4, 2008

November 4, 2008 /

I’m liberal on social issues, but fiscally conservative.  This usually pushes me towards the democrat side of things, given that they agree with me on one of those two things, whereas the modern republican party agrees with me on neither.

Still, I think there is a better reason to vote for Obama than that: to me, it is important to punish incompetence, and the GOP has been incompetent for the last eight years, between 9/11, the war, Katrina and the current financial meltdown.  If there is one thing that I’ve learned as a game designer, it is that if you reward incompetence, you only get more incompetence in return.

But don’t let me change your mind – but do vote.  I think that the 2000 election alone has proven that voting matters.

Original comments thread is here.

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