singlespace

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Posts posted by singlespace

  2. Posted

    Jesus. Fuck. I'm not a particularly big fan of games journalism, or even much journalism of any kind, but all of the increasingly byzantine arguments I've heard over increasingly trivial stakes during the past few weeks are just such a goddamn fucking stretch. It's like equating an E3 press pass or an action figure in a jiffy bag to pharmaceutical companies flying doctors to Hawaii (which they actually fucking do). Gawker sites are so hungry for content, they're not really keeping anyone or anything out.

     

    Dude, chill out. If you've followed how this discussion has been going, it's largely been academic or rather just musings. No one here is screaming that games journalism is corrupt, or that games have been ruined, or that games media is terrible, or anything of the sort.

  3. Posted

     

    These are the two ideals I have in mind when I'm reading about games. So you can see how ethical guidelines are of no use to me.

     
    I think we can all agree that Idle Thumbs is one of the most interesting pieces of gaming media available today. One of my favourite pieces of video game content has been Steve Gaynor's Tone Control. For me, much of the most interesting content on games is easily the most biased.
     
    It's natural that much of the most interesting discourse on any subject comes from those who are most involved. People become increasingly involved in whatever things they love in life and that's a great thing. But I don't think this renders ethical guidelines useless.
     
    When Steve Gaynor interview Neil Druckmann, knowledge of who they are and how they relate to the discussion at hand is inherent. We understand who they are and what that means. When we are faced with a journalist, this is not necessarily the case.
     
    Ethical guidelines provide a measure of protection to what is often the only lens by which we can view a world that is inaccessible to us. Whether it is due to time, or knowledge, or simply where we find ourselves in life, there are many topics where we must simply take the word of those who relate the news to us. Ethical guidelines serve to give us some small measure of assurance that this lens is fair.

  4. Posted

    I don't fully understand the Patreon aspect, as it seems like reverse situation of the kind of payola an ethics policy prevents. It seems very close to forbidding game journalists to buy the kind of games they want to support?

     

    Go back to post #25 and read a few of the subsequent posts, the subject is discussed a bit there, but yeah part of the contention is whether or not Patreon should be viewed as purchasing games or as a material contribution.

     

    Also, while I fully understand that two things can be wrong at the same time, are these ethics enthusiasts familiar with the way our government has been interacting with the press that covers them over the past 20 years? How the nature of that access has shaped what wars the United States have started? 

     

    Ethical issues in general journalism in recent years make any issues in the gaming media look like blemishes on paragons of virtue. I don't think anyone is under the illusion that the issue of Patreon is somehow a Big Deal, or that journalism in general is some kind of perfect machine that the gaming media should aspire to become.

  5. Posted

    Do y'all look at the ethics-policy of a site when you are deciding which site to read? This thread is making me realize how different my consumption of games-writing is from others.

     

    Nah, but I respect establishments more who take the time to consider these issues carefully. Polygon was probably the first site where I took the time to read through their entire policy because at one point Justin McElroy was making a point of how they take issues of journalism seriously. Ever since then I've had this thought, right or wrong, that Polygon was special because they aspired towards something a bit different than other establishments.

  6. Posted

    I haven't been reading this thread, but I would like to mention a thing. Back when Microsoft unveiled the first redesign of the Xbox 360, the audience (which was mostly press people) received free 360s to take home. Jeremy Parish happened to receive one, and immediately gave it away because he wasn't comfortable with the idea of being given a gift by a console manufacturer. That's probably the exact moment where my respect and trust of that guy completely solidified.

     

    That's pretty awesome. Jeremy Parish was brought up earlier in the thread and his more personal discussion of ethics is nice. I feel like most discussions of this nature are more practical, or more academic, but few just layout ethics as part of their own experiences like Parish did.

  7. Posted

    There's a short and a long answer to that. The short answer is "no". The long answer is "no, obviously not". I was saying that the Angry Internet's insistence that Grayson be fired was based a) on a misstated date provided in the middle of a Timecube-length ramble by a vengeful ex-boyfriend, which even he has now walked back and b ) on the apparent belief that he hadn't communicated the existence of a potential conflict of interest to his editor, or that he had and his editor had thrown back his cape, cackled dramatically and told him to go ahead. Neither is likely to be the case.

    Angry Internet not really knowing how working in professional journalism functions is a problem here, as in many cases is Angry Internet not actually having a clear picture of how working works, since many have yet to enter the labor pool or are outside it, concentrating on building their YouTube channel.

     

    This is neither here nor there: stop bring up Nathan Grayson and the Internet mob as though it has any bearing on the current discussion.

     

    In the Kuchera/Quinn case, it's possible that Kuchera didn't think to report it. It's also possible that Polygon has a de mininimis clause that means that a small donation, say, whether to an indie dev or a charity, is not considered a conflict of interest. Or that Ars had the same, and he didn't think of it when he moved. It's probably a good idea to have rules about this, and to enforce them, but Patreon is a tip jar; the average donation to Zoe Quinn's Patreon page is about $5. It would be a good thing to have a solid policy on, but it's not a lot to build a whole j'accuse on.

     

    There is no need for hypotheticals, the entire Polygon Ethics Statement is available on their site. There is no insignificant clause applicable to Patreon. In fact, as anthonyRichard pointed out, there is no clause applicable to Patreon at all.

     

    Speaking personally, the idea that the best place to focus attention in the search for ethical violations is the microfunding site entry of a female developer is kind of unfortunate but probably inevitable. As we saw the last time there was a big games journalism corruption story, when the focus on PepsiCo's influence over the programming of GTTV and the offering of a PlayStation3 at the VGAs to journalists in exchange for tweeting a hashtag about Defiance were both largely forgotten in the rush to scrutinize and threaten a woman who had been involved in neither situation, but who was foolish enough to tweet an opinion that disagreed with a columnist's.

     

    You seem pretty bent on making this out to be some kind of witch hunt or anti-feminist discussion: it's just a discussion of specific somewhat ill defined aspects of journalistic ethics. No one here is calling for anyone's head. No one here is saying Kuchera's Patreon donations are some heinous crime or an example of corruption. Most people here, myself included, don't even think that Kuchera donating to a developer he writes about is inherent unethical. My own stance is such things need to be disclosed, but the specific act of materially contributing to someone you're writing about isn't necessarily unethical.

  8. Posted

    Stephen Totilo at Kotaku has updated their policies, seemingly in response to community feedback, to bar employees from contributing to Patreon campaigns by any developers.

     

    Seems like the choice was driven by practical necessity rather than having an ethical leaning one way or another:

     

    "We've also agreed that funding any developers through services such as Patreon introduce needless potential conflicts of interest and are therefore nixing any such contributions by our writers. Some may disagree that Patreons are a conflict. That's a debate for journalism critics."

     

    I wonder whether Polygon will discuss their stance on Patreon or not.

  9. Posted

    Well here. Talk about this one instead so you won't be confused for intentionally contributing to the misogynist witch-hunt.

    http://wip.warpdoor.com/tag/data-stains/

    http://www.patreon.com/user?u=263521

    To be clear, I have no problem with a developer contributing to a writer's Patreon. But for those of you who do, I'd prefer if you distance your discussion from a female developer who is intentionally being mobbed punitively.

     

    That actually is not the same situation. We're talking about a journalist contributing to a developer they are writing about, the example you provided is a developer contributing to a journalist, which seems like a more clear cut issue.

     

    I think the discussion is moving towards the more abstract anyways, so from a practical standpoint I don't think it really matters whether the specific example is changed or not.

  10. Posted

    Slightly random thought, but... I just paid for Robert Yang's new game on itch.io, even though I didn't have to. Does that make me more corrupt (because I have given the creator money, rather than having to part with the money in exchange for the game) or less corrupt (I have paid for the game, rather than getting it for free)? Is it only acceptable ethically to pay the minimum market price? How about collector's editions? I'd be very suspicious of e.g a games journalist getting a high-value collector's edition as a review copy, but if someone buys a collector's edition and reviews it, they have paid more than they need to have. Does that make a difference?

     

    I don't believe there is any issue with contributing to Patreon, buying special editions, paying a higher value when you have the option, or other such things as long as notable external factors which may affect the writer's disposition towards their subject in ways that would not be obvious unless disclosed are noted.

     

    For instance, if a writer was discussing his own wife without disclosing the fact, it would not be ethical because the reader has no way of knowing that the piece was written from the perspective of a husband about his wife rather than from the perspective of a stranger. The same holds true of an artist criticizing their own work, or an investor discussing the viability of company they have invested in, etc.

     

    Nothing is objective, but it is important to know if there are relevant situations that may colour the attitude of a writer towards a particular subject. The objectionable part isn't that there is bias — that is a given — but that there is bias that we cannot reasonably account for.

     

    In the case of Kuchera/Quinn, I think it's probably relevant to consider what "undisclosed" means. There's no attempt to conceal his donations to Patreon - it's a matter of public record. So, while it isn't being disclosed in the article, it's also not being concealed. It's in the public domain. Given that, I'd say it's probably oversight rather than malice that led to the failure to disclose on that article - or the donation falls beneath a set de minimis level. There's no attempt to conceal the donation more generally...

     

    I'm sure it was an oversight, but to say that this information was disclosed simply because the records are available to the public is disingenuous at best. The actual text of the ethics policy explicitly states that conflicts will be noted on the writer's profile page, disclosed in context, or made explicit in the footnotes.

     

    It's also unlikely that this information was not available to his editor, or his publisher. Not to suggest that people on the Internet can be a little solipsistic sometimes, but the fact that something was not disclosed to you does not mean it wasn't disclosed. I don't know if that was the case with Kuchera and Polygon, but I _very_ much doubt that Nathan Grayson's editor was not aware of his relationship. It wasn't disclosed to the readers, because journalists don't have an obligation to disclose details of their private lives if there is no conflict of interest, and Nathan Grayson recused himself from writing about Quinn after the relationship started.

     

    Are you seriously trying to argue that information that is known strictly internally to an organization can be considered disclosed? Nathan Grayson's situation was that no conflict actually occurred because he recused himself of writing about Quinn, hence there was no reason to disclose any information whatsoever. If Nathan Grayson had written a piece on Quinn after they had been in a relationship, then it would be remiss not to disclose their previous relationship, but that's a hypothetical universe that does not exist. That is an entirely different situation than what we are discussing.

  11. Posted

    Is Kuchera the only games-journalist who supports a Patreon of a developer they wrote about? Seems kind of coincidental that Zoe Quinn is part of another games-journalism integrity discussion so soon after a campaign has tried to shame her out of notability. It's as if a mob is continuing to try and isolate her and destroy the reputation of anyone who enjoys her work publically.

     

    No, there are others being discussed right now on the Interwebs, but the only one that seems to have actual evidence supporting a possible conflict that I've seen has been Kuchera, hence why I limited my discussion only to him.

  12. Posted

    @singlespace

    I'm not necessarily arguing that Patreon & Kickstarter contributions shouldn't be disclosed, but I do think that they don't fall under the current ethical guidelines. I think that if we try to contort the current standards to fit these things then we end up broadening definitions so much that they become too open to interpretation, which plausibly might have the effect of lowering standards in the long-term. However, it seems clear that a lot of people have concerns about this and it might be a good idea to update the guidelines with new rules that are specifically tailored to these models.

     

    That is a really good point.

  13. Posted

    My understanding of Patreon is that it comes with an expectation, or in some cases requirement, of a certain volume of work created.  Some people have it structured as X amount per article/game/song/whatever, while others have it valued at X per month (Quinn is per month).  But even that per month amount carries an expectation of a certain amount of work that will appear.  Quinn does not guarantee, but says you can expect, on average about a game a month plus additional writings, videos, and jokes/gags.  I would view subscribing to her Patreon as a subscription to her content, in the same way I might subscribe to podcasts where all/most of their content is free (like Maximum Fun, Dan Carlin or Dan Savage). 

     

    Kickstarter has literal expectations written at each tier as well, but in reality both are realistically just best effort promises. I don't think I've backed a single Kickstarter or Patreon that has delivered to the letter of what they promised, hence in both a practical sense it's better to think of the stated commitments in the same way you would view the promises of a startup looking for venture capital, which is to say with the knowledge that is very likely that plans will change and all the things promised could disappear.

     

    In a very real way, when you give money to a Kickstarter or Patreon, you're just giving money to the creators because there is a decent risk that nothing will come of the effort. If you give money with the expectation that there will be returns as described, you will be disappointed sooner rather than later. I suppose if you limit your contributions to only Patreons with exceptional track records, or guaranteed Kickstarters, then your experience will be different than what I described, but usually those people don't really belong on Patreon or Kickstarter in the first place.

     

    A compelling argument could probably swing me some on this, but ultimately the point I'm making is that I don't think it's an automatic, clear cut case of being unethical simply by contributing to a Patreon campaign.

     

    I don't think it is unethical to contribute, I just think that financial contributions to developers game journalists are writing about should be disclosed because of the possible affects those material contributions can have on the writers perspective. It's not as though giving someone money is inherently wrong, I just feel that it's better to disclose these kinds of things due to the possibility of irrational bias.

     

    I don't know if I have an answer for you, but I feel that there is a certain pull that making financial contributions exerts on those who contribute. You feel as though you are part of whatever you contributed towards because there is a link in the form of money between you and those who you are supporting in a very direct way. I think that those kinds of feelings can introduce unexpected bias into a person's disposition towards whatever they're funding in ways that even receiving gifts or experiencing a game in a carefully engineered environment cannot.

  14. Posted

    You mean like the literal definition of investment? You need to have an expectation of profit for it to qualify. It doesn't have to be monetary, necessarily, but the expectation of enjoyment or the expression of support seems like a pretty big stretch to me.

     

    Well, yes, you would need to have a material profit for the strict definition of the word. There is a difference between giving someone money with no expectation of material return but to support a cause, is different than a financial investment, but I am not so certain that it is something that need not be disclosed.

     

    Maybe it should be considered equivalent to intangible interests of any sort since there is no expectation of material return. Maybe it should be considered equivalent to an investment because a material financial transaction has occurred. The answer is not clear to me, but I know that it does not feel right to me for it not to be acknowledged in anyway. Perhaps I need more time to mull over the issue before I can articulate why I feel that way, but when Junior Mints was talking about Polygon's strict rules on contributing to Kickstarter and limits of $50 on gifts of any sort, it felt right.

     

    Overall, it's not a huge deal I guess, it's just a single sentence missed and probably not much money at all, but it just seems wrong.

  15. Posted

    Second, Kuchera is actually in the clear here in my opinion.  Even if he didn't disclose.  Because journalists buy games.  Does every games journalist provide an excel spreadsheet of every gaming related purchase they make per year?  Do they need to update reviews announcing that they bought the latest map pack for a shooter they enjoy?  I don't think so, and you can make a pretty legit argument that's what Kuchera is doing with Patreon.  Is there a difference between him buying every DoubleFine game that is released, and him paying for everything that Quinn releases for free?  She provides the ability to directly pay her for all of the work she does as a pay-what-you-want model.  If Kuchera just went and paid her $2 every time she produced something, would that need to be disclosed?  He's automated a thing that he could do manually, that if he was doing manually, no one would criticize him for.

     

    But he wasn't buying a game, and to me that isn't just a semantic difference. Your redefinition of Patreon sounds like an equivocation of what these services are meant to be: Patreon is literally supporting creators directly instead of on a product basis.

     

    I have put maybe $1500 - 2000 into Kickstarters and Patreon combined and I have never once thought of it as paying for a product: I'm supporting a person or team so that they have a chance to do the things they want in life. When I put money into Kickstarter or Patreon, I don't expect anything back. I just expect them to give their best effort at following the things they set out to do. If they fail, that's fine, as long as they gave it their best. That's a very different thing than buying a game.

  16. Posted

    Seems like this is the latest one making the rounds, this time concerning Polygon:

     

    Ben Kuchera didn't disclose that he was a Patreon supporter of Zoe Quinn while he wrote an article directly about Quinn, which may or may not go against Polygon's Ethics Statement under the subsection of Conflict:

    Polygon's Ethics Statement - http://www.polygon.com/pages/ethics-statement

    March 19, 2014 - http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5526114/developer-zoe-quinn-offers-real-world-advice-support-for-dealing-with

     

    If you want to go by the letter, Polygon's Ethics Statement never states that it doesn't cover people in which their writers have an undisclosed financial investment, and you can define investment in such a way that just giving someone money doesn't qualify, but that would seem to go against the spirit of the statement. When I support a project on Kickstarter or person on Patreon, I have a vested interest in seeing them succeed.

     

    I think Ben Kuchera just messed up, so now what? I would hazard nothing, and maybe that's alright. I think people will argue that its not a significant investment, and it is not the kind of investment where one will ever receive any kind of financial benefit, but I'm still kind of disappointed: I had the impression that Polygon was ironclad on these kinds of things.

  20. Posted

    FYI there's a general Star Trek thread here. I don't think we talked much about fan films though. I think the general consensus on the Thumbs IRC a while back was that they are shit...

    Thanks, I couldn't see anything on cursory search, hence why I made a new thread.

     

    I don't think we talked much about fan films though. I think the general consensus on the Thumbs IRC a while back was that they are shit...

    That's why I made this post actually: the Axanar short was released about a week ago and isn't half bad, rough in spots, but they work within their resources and skill to good effect.

     

    It also helps that they have Tony Todd, Kate Vernon and Richard Hatch from Battlestar Galactica, J.G. Hertzler who played Martok from DS9, and Gary Graham who played Ambassador Soval from Enterprise. The fans themselves who are driving the project, along with staff, appear to be primarily composed of professionals as well.

  21. Posted

    If I get my cousin work as a secretary in my department because he needs a job, that's nepotism, although really the softest kind. If I nominate my friend for the executive board, it's going to be because he's the best person I know for the position. Being my friend is just how I know that he is the best.

     

    That's the practical reality of the situation in my experience. The fastest way to find good qualified people is by simply knowing someone who is qualified. Selecting from people you don't know is a long laborious process of filtering through hundreds of resumes with dozens of interviews until you find a handful of candidates if anyone at all. Even then, it's not as though someone you suggest isn't interviewed or vetted.

  22. Posted

    And I don't know much about the Gjoni guy, his twitter has been hacked and he appears to be a native Spanish speaker, so it's all really murky. But when I actually checked out his original ZoePost website I was surprised by the content because there wasn't the vitriol and ex-bashing I would have expected, though I admit I only skimmed it. He actually specifically says on there that he does not want it to hurt the efforts of feminism in games or Social Justice stuff. Maybe he's lying. For sure his way of doing things was dumb, and ineffective.

     

    I agreed with your former point that the rhetoric is getting out of hand, but what Zoe Quinn does in her private life is just that: private. Quinn's personal life is none of our concern and irrelevant to any discussion of journalistic integrity. The massive post that everyone seems to want to discuss was not about ethics. It wasn't about journalistic integrity. It wasn't even remotely about the game industry in the least. It was someone hurt and angry lashing out in the most horrible of ways in an effort to destroy someone's life and that is not okay.

     

    There were questions of Quinn's relationship with Nathan Grayson, but Grayson did not review any of Quinn's work. He wrote a few articles that mentioned Depression Quest amongst dozens and dozens of other games. He wrote a piece on GAME_JAM, which Quinn amongst many others was involved, but just about every other establishment wrote a similar piece. That's it. There was nothing at all suspicious about Grayson's work and Stephen Totilo specifically addressed concerns as the man responsible for the publication.

     

    No one should be beyond criticism, but unsubstantiated speculation is not criticism. I'm not going to sit here and dissect Quinn's personal life as if it were some slab of meat on display for academic curiosity. If you want to talk about nepotism in the games industry fine. If you want to talk about problems with the integrity journalism go ahead, but none of that has anything to do with the details of Quinn's personal life.

  23. Posted

    I rarely check my twitter but when I did I saw that Phil Fish was back on. So I checked his page and there was a post of him lambasting someone. I checked it out and it was apparently someone who said that they had been sexually harrassed. By Zoe Quinn.  Everyone dogpiled on him and told  him he was human scum and a terrible person. This was before all the ZQ stuff really hit the fan, about 6 days ago. I actually had to check a cached page of the guy because he deleted his tweet after everyone gave him so much shit. He seems like a decent guy. He seems to be pretty involved in promoting greater involvement with female game devs in the industry too. Everyone shit on him real hard and he apologized.

     

    I kind of feel the same way. You see the same kinds of dehumanizing rhetoric being spouted by both the people who are harassing Quinn and those who are supporting Quinn. Obviously the hordes that are attacking Quinn are doing far far worse things than spouting rhetoric, really terrible things, but it makes for an uncomfortable situation when you'd rather associate with no one and just stay far away from the entire mess.

  25. Posted

    Why can't some of these hacker types be on the other side of this argument and start hacking the hackers?

    1. Escalating situations is not an answer
    2. If you are knowledgeable enough about security to perform these kinds of attacks, you can be paid to leverage your knowledge in other tasks
    3. You have no idea who is actually doing it
    4. Even if you did, you would be under the same legal threat of prosecution regardless of your intent
    5. They have the capability to retaliate, so why take all these risks and waste your own time?