"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

["Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"]

That's fine and all, but the video is a hit-piece. Any discussion that implies suspicious methods or motivations of the IGF at this time are happening because of a hit-piece. The video is intended to punish people who are calling out the harrassment campaign against Quinn. This group is just trying to bring as much negative attention as they possibly can to people who are opposed to their attempts to punish Quinn. That's why I find it strange that people are discussing these issues right now. You have a semi-organized group of abusive pricks trying to create any controvesy they can about people who oppose them and then games-writers write think-pieces about the issue as if these trolls read. They don't fucking care. As soon as it becomes common knowledge that the accusations are bullshit, the hit-squad is just going to find out where Phil Fish lived in 2001 and interview the landlord to find out that he didn't get his deposit back. Then all the video game blogs will write pieces on whether or not it is ethical for game-developers to use their deposit for the last month of rent. They are  just moving the public attention around to show people that opposing them will be more effort than it is worth.

1. Their motives aren't important. I don't care what their motives are.* I only care if what they're saying is true. 

2. I don't even believe that video in the first place. If there were actually something to it, then I'll believe it when I see it in court, and not until then. Everything I brought up was the stuff not in that video. It was stuff that has been brought up in the indie community for years and years. People said in this thread "there's no issues with the indie scene, it's all cool. People are just jerks with bad motives", but that's clearly not true. The indie scene needs a good dose of self reflection. 

I mean this stuff happens in film etc, too, but I guess I kind of hoped people would do better than this. 

 

 

Indiefund has a hard cap on the ROI it receives from investments, the IGF definitely doesn't force judges to only play their assigned games, a possible 8 person bias doesn't immediately turn the tide of judging, the judging process is decently decentralized and the organization encourages judges with links to the games they judge to shy away.

Not a lawyer, but I'm not sure if any of those things constitute racketeering, and if it does, the combination of all of that stuff seems to point to it all being a consequence of the industry being really small (and pretty imbalanced), plus the honest effort of people trying to promote a game that they think deserves it.

It's not symptomatic of corruption but it touches on something that's been said to death about the indie scene as an industry player: it's super small, super nascent, is individual focused and thus has a tendency to popularize solitary voices, yadda yadda yadda. I recognize these as actual problems but they're not worth the directed, hateful ire at the fortunate or assuming that there's a conspiracy behind everything. It's probably much better to focus on alternative voices and underground scenes and foster a culture of inclusiveness through diversity of taste and opinion in media.

The power structure that exists exists as a natural consequence of weird tribal tendencies and curation, rather than through authoritarian enforcement. The indie scene has always fostered a very inclusive, diy culture. I like to imagine gamergate people as Captain Ahab projecting intent onto the great white whale; it exists and its a potential problem but Jesus christ it's not out to get you.

Anyway does anyone have any links to constructive discussion about how the IGF is structured and how it could be improved?

EDIT: This last week weirded me out because I felt really compelled to make certain arguments in bad faith. I don't think I would've said that capitalism is a truly equalizing force if I wasn't so pissed about the whole situation to begin with. The conversation was started in bad faith so everything after it feels kind of illegitimate.

I agree with pretty much every thing you said, though I do think that the "natural consequences of weird tribal tendencies" is exactly what constitutes systemic corruption. It's not the Illuminati or a conspiracy, it's just a lack of transparency and natural human desire. 

Also I espeically agree with your point about focusing on how we can be constructive. That's what I would much rather focus on. Rather than sitting around patting ourselves on the back saying how we're so much better than a bunch of socially stunted neckbeards. 

How can things be made better? I think Auntie Pixelante had some good suggestions. I think for one there's way too much centralization in the power, there needs to be more accountability to people who enter their games. Actually... I'm not really clear on how the IGF started. How did it become the premiere voice of Indie games? Why is it the only one? I mean you have large film festivals like Slamdance, Sundance, SXSW, etc, but there's no single Be All End All, and there's tons of small film festivals all over america. Hmm.... Maybe the issue is there's not enough support for games as an artform from traditional Art Grants. There's not a lot of government funding for people. I know the Texas Film Commission has started reaching out and supporting game stuff here, which is encouraging, but that's still pretty small. Maybe this is just something that the medium has to grow out of, it needs to become more mainstream and understood by the populace. 

[The Nintendo Wii U is Great Thread]

I guess this is not in the U.S.? I was thinking I'd get a toy for my dog (Don't worry she loves plushes and will never destroy them), but I still see the same few gifts left. Guess I will probably be having another mass amount of coins expiring next year.

Far too familiar a feeling. 

[Stick it to the man]

Ryan North, cool dude, tall dude, wrote it. It's so heavily inspired by Psychonauts it's a little too much, but it's also really really good, and it's enjoyable very much in the same way as Broken Age, though better in it's control scheme if you're playing with a controller. Has a similar flow too. 

 

[Nintendo 3DS]

I'm a little disappointed with the second analog stick. It's still a little nubbin. I was surprised they didn't come out with a full second stick on the original 3DS. Approx 98% of my 3DS use has been Mii Spot Pass. I got it because I managed to get the Ambassador deal while still paying the dropped price. And I enjoyed fire emblem and stuff, but I haven't used it that much. Mostly because they refuse to do sales and I honestly don't see much that really grabs me, other than Shovel Knight. 

I'm going to get Smash though and I think that will probably justify the purchase in a lot of ways for me, haha. And maybe I'll splurge and get the new Phoenix Wright game finally. Really the only reason I played my original DS either. 

["Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"]

Yeah, once I realised that you're talking about 'corruption' here and about labour in games in the Video Games forum, it became clearer that your position is strongly anti-capitalist and we weren't picking up on the difference in assumptions.

 

The art vs commerce question is incredibly difficult in games, because it's always been a hobbyist medium with a capitalist streak. It's simultaneously radically participatory and aggressively commercial in ways that confound both art critics and shareholders. The biggest game in the world was made by a guy doing a hobby project and he's a multi-millionaire. CCP games made an MMO that was what they always wanted to see, and it's one of Iceland's biggest companies. CEOs of gaming companies take turns proclaiming that they're going to focus on making "great games" at the expense of profitability. Major players are routinely outclassed, and even humiliated, by hobbyists who build on their work, and this is normal and expected. Entrenched powers get blown away every five years. The games industry is fucking weird in that capital only ensures you'll break even, but market leadership can't be bought at any price - no matter how many ads you buy, it won't stop a Minecraft.

 

I also note that games journalists obsessed for years over when a game with a strong artistic statement would gain mainstream recognition, but what ended up doing it was the industry making fuckloads of money. 

I'm not exactly anti-capitalist. I just think that that power ought to be distributed as evenly as possible because it has a tendency to corrupt people (which is a pretty mainstream position I think, though in effect many people are not cool with having their privilege called into question). 

Also Minecraft is a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE outlier. The games industry IS NOT an industry in which humble hobbysists blow up the Big Guys every five years. That's an empirical fact. 

Here's a video by Game Theorists on the subject of the myth of "innovation" in the video game industry (excuse the cringey presentation. They really need to do a little more study on fonts. Also this video was posted months ago, and is not gamergate related at all. In fact it is anti gamer in it's position) 

Minecraft is a rare outlier. And this isn't something that invades other industry as much. Oh sure, there's still big tentpole movies like Guardians of the Galaxy but indie films still do much better on average than indie games. Well, sorta. I mean if you look at Sundance films that get distribution they often lose money (but only for the investors not the filmmakers), but in games it's ONLY the Big Guys that make any real substantial money. Point is, the whole "innovative small games disrupt the market" is much less true than we'd often like.

 

It's not possible to stop people from harassing public figures is it? I just watched a video about IGF corruption because it was linked on a Twitter comment. These people have a hit-list. When one rumor no longer directs a hateful mob at their targets, they just make something else up. Eventually the stuff that is more complex and which borrows events from vague histories lasts longer because no one wants to take the time to disprove that mess. It's interesting to see how conspiracies are actually these genetic-algorithms whose fitness-requirements are based on how much Twitter-harassment they produce.

The only way I can see to shut them up is to just stop going on Twitter.

Now that I've watched this monster grow up in front of me, I can't help but see the Youtube subscribed-numbers and the Twitter follower-count as human bot-nets that are being rented out to put undesirable attention on anyone that doesn't meet their demands. It's rather creepy. Has anyone seen a news story where this extortion-method was used for explicit monetary milking? You know, "Give me 50,000 bit-coins or two of the biggest Youtubers and a Hollywood actor are going to spread some nasty rumors about your time as a boy-band member!"

Doesn't Twitter have some sort of private-account type that requires approvals for followers?

Okay so that video is crazy. I like Brandon Boyer a lot. I go every month to his Juegos Rancheros meet up here in Austin. I wrote a glowing article about it in Loser City. But the IGF is also kind of fucked up, and people have known that for years. 

The whole racketeering accusation in that video, hard to really substantiate unless you dig up the doxxed files from Polytron's website, so I'm going to wait until we see some actual legal action before I form an opinion on that. But people like Auntie Pixel, Anthony Burch, and Edmund McMillen have been complaining about issues with the IGF, for years, far before this gamergate bullshit got started. 

Two years ago a dev who entered IGF wrote this blog post talking about his horrible experience with the festival. http://therottingcartridge.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/whats-wrong-with-the-igf/

Basically he entered his game (which costs 95 dollars) and of the 8 judges, 

1 played it for a little under an hour, 

3 played it for less than 5 minutes

3 installed it, but didn't play it

and 1 didn't even bother installing the game. 

Now look there's plenty of bullshit that goes on in the award shows for movies too. I've been involved in the film fest scene and there's a fair share of cronyism going on*, but at least every single film festival I've ever entered guaranteed that it would watch my film (also they were waaaay cheaper than IGF. Even late submissions for SXSW are 1/3rd less than IGFs on time fee). Half of the judges who were assigned to judge that guy's game didn't even play the game! And yeah they're volunteers, yeah a game should probably grab you quick, blah blah blah blah. The judges didn't even give it a chance, and while this is going on many of the judges flock to play games with bigger name recognition, these games often being ones created by people who are friends with Boyer. (and many of these games are my favorite games, and I love 'em but still it's fucked up for the little guy)

*the Oscars is a complete joke. The only people who vote are the anonymous members of the Academy, which is like 98% white males. They gave Driving Miss Daisy the Oscar over Do the Right Thing. Fuck man, how did that happen? 

And JonCole, you were asking me about specific instances of cronyism in the industry. What's your thoughts on this stuff? I mean IGF isn't press exactly but this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. (like I said, I fucking love Boyer's crowd and what he does, but I also feel kind of gross whenever I see great local devs getting shot down for people who are from out of town and already have great publishing deals in hand)

["Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"]

But, I mean... isn't that implied by the very idea of evaluating art?

Maybe? I mean, it's hard to say what's implied when you're talking about a vast number of people. Some people believe in objective standards in art. Some people believe in subjective standards. Some people believe in objective standards but subjective perception. Some people don't even believe that video games are art, or that if they were they should be evaluated in the same way as art. 

If we're talking in general about the games press though? I don't think that's generally the way they're evaluated. 

 

Systemic corruption is defined as the following:

 

 

So let me get this straight. You're saying that corruption is the rule rather than the exception, that corruption is the primary if not only method by which things are reported at all in the games industry? That companies regularly bribe journalists/reporters to present gaming news exactly how they wish it to be presented?

A couple of things. I'm not sure where you get "the rule, rather than the exception" from that definition. I'm guessing maybe you're pointing at the use of the word "routinely" maybe? Anyway I'm not making any statement on the the rate of incidence, and I'm not exactly clear what you're getting at. Also bribing isn't really systemic corruption unless it's actually part of the mechanism of the organization. Just look at the definition that wikipedia gives: 

Systemic corruption (or endemic corruption) is corruption which is primarily due to the weaknesses of an organization or process. It can be contrasted with individual officials or agents who act corruptly within the system.

A single cop regularly taking bribes isn't systemic corruption. A cop writing a higher than necessary number of speeding tickets, in order to meet an unofficial quota, due to pressure from higher up to make more money for the department is systemic corruption. The wiki article also goes on to say "Factors which encourage systemic corruption include conflicting incentives, discretionary powers; monopolistic powers; lack of transparency; low pay; and a culture of impunity." All of which I think applies to games press. (except monopoly I guess)  (also the article goes on to talk about the rule rather than exception too, so maybe that's where you're getting that from?)

More importantly semantic arguments are the weakest piddling argument to beat around the bush with. 

I don't even think there's that big of an issue. I took issue with undisclosed Patreon, that has been changed. I still think there's a general paradigm shift in how we talk about games that needs to take place, but that sort of thing takes time. My original point was that I object to the statement "there is/never has been corruption, and anyone who thinks there is has motives for saying so". 

 

It's imprecise to use 'systemic corruption' to describe a highly commercialised industry in which the major corporations use every avenue available to attempt to influence thought leaders. A corrupt industry is one that suspends its ethical standards for money, not one in which there are holes in their ethical standards that haven't yet been patched.

 

Honestly I also think that the worst-case scenario here isn't particularly worth worrying about: at worst, game journalism is a third-party advertisement of commercial products, and consumers will have to rely on product reviews to determine whether that product is any good -- just like most other kinds of products. The artistic standards of the industry would definitely decrease, but people don't seem to be referring to cultural critics like Brandon Keogh or Anita Sarkeesian when they talk about corruption, they mean sites like Gamespot or IGN. So the cultural critics, who make the most difference in discussing non-commercial games and the artistic side of the medium, probably won't go away.

I don't think Anita is corrupt in the least, and I don't want to seem like that was my position. Anita is cool. If anything she's exactly what I wish we had more of. 

And yeah, I guess it's not the end of the world if games journalism continues to be advertisement for commercial products but DAGNABIT! I want the medium to do something better. The fact that we're talking about games as a "commercial product" in the first place is depressing. 

Maybe it's kind of silly to expect that because of the nature of the economics in creating mass-production art. On the other hand fine art kind of has similar but different problems. Maybe I'm being unrealistically idealistic of art for it's own inherent merit, but I sure hope I'm not.

["Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"]

Patreon is barely plausible as even a conflict of interest -- calling it 'corruption' verges on ludicrous. Yeah, journalists might be more inclined to view a project they've financially supported favorably -- they also probably have favorite genres, favorite developers/studios (even if they've never met/had sex with them), favorite consoles and control schemes and rendering styles. It's a huge fucking stretch to call any of that systemic bias, when having opinions like that is their job.

Okay maybe we just disagree. As I said, when I originally brought that up, the issue of the Ikea effect came up, and I think it's a relevant thing. 

And as I've said, to me the solution here is NOT to make sure journalists don't contribute money to Patreon. The solution, in my opinion is to shift away from the authoritarian model of press, towards one which embraces and is transparent about the subjectivity of humans. This doesn't mean paragraph long disclaimers before each article, it means holistically integrating people's subjective experience in to the way they evaluate art. 

 

The casual use of "corruption" to describe any kind of bias for any reason is really bothering me.

Look, I'm just using the term the way it is used in certain contexts. Maybe people find the connotations of the word too harsh but I don't semantic games are really going to push the issue forward. I'll call it something else if you'd prefer. 

 

Yeah, there are problems in the games industry and press for sure, but whether identify with gaters or not MadJackalope, some of the things you're pointing to are decidedly within the same crazy ballpark as everything they're hooting about.

I get that, but if I change my opinion merely because some crazy people held it then I would have a hard time picking any opinion at all. I believe in evolution, but that doesn't mean that I agree with Social Darwinist and eugenics, does it? I am a feminist but I disagree with Dworkin. I'm a person who thinks that video games can be a medium of artistic expression, but I don't necessarily  like everything that is called a "video game". Changing one's opinions in reaction to perceptions of the opposition is the textbook definition of reactionary. 

And if I'm wrong, or crazy, then I'm good to discuss that, and taking that down a peg. I know on a personal level that that I am fallible and often wrong. 

["Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"]

I think one of the biggest things fueling #GameGhazi among more "reasonable" people was the belief that shoddy journalism was due to some outside force and not just people doing a bad job of what they do. In those situations, it's hard to point out that all A is B but not all B is A.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, and I do not associate myself in anyway with GameGhazi or Gamergate, don't even talk with those crowds, but I don't think it is some kind of "outside force". These are systemic issues, they're internal, they're unintentional, but they still lead to bad stuff. 

["Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"]

Except that's not at all what she said? She said they never uncovered any corruption because they never actually tried to uncover any, not because there was never any there.

The Patreon thing was brought up and while it's hard to say "who uncovered it", but I think there's a pretty big Venn Diagram involved. I do agree that a lot of these people have bad motives though, but saying EVERYONE has bad motives is just wrong.  

 

Everything that happened in the past two weeks was about hurting people, 4chan was given a reason to attack someone that they already hated. Any real criticism about games journalism has been drowned out by people getting together to completely drag people through the mud for no reason. I do think that there is room for a conversation about games journalism but it has to happen in a safe and respectful environment, you guys are doing a pretty good of that so far. 

Agreed. And I hope I'm not causing too much conflict or sounding like an asshole. This is the only place I'm willing to discuss this online, because I respect you guys, and I hope you guys know that. 

 

If I make you a chair with three functioning legs, that chair is not corrupt unless I was paid by your sworn enemy to endanger your coccyx. It is however indubitably a shoddy piece of work.

 

Shoddy journalism may also be corrupt journalism. However, it need not be. Plenty of people are able to turn out substandard work without being illicitly encouraged to do so.

So, you know, words mean things? That's basically what's happening here. Words are meaning things.

That's a good point, but I think it's not quite right. 

So yes, words mean things, when they're instantiated in a specific cultural context. We're both using valid definitions of corruption, though slightly different. 

You're talking about malicious corruption, people consciously attacking someone they disagree with for bad reasons. I'm talking about systemic corruption, which I think is a more problematic and insidious issue. 

I would say most relevant corruption is systemic. People aren't silent film villains cackling in delight as they twirl their mustaches and blow the dynamite under The One True Hero. Most often they're normal people, trying to do what they think is right, but going about it in a harmful way, encouraged by things like perverse incentives, lack of accountability, etc. 

This kind of corruption is so insidious because it's mostly invisible. This is the problem a lot of modern liberal white people have when you try and talk about racism to them. They say "Hey I'm not racist. I'm colorblind! I don't treat other people bad because of their skin color". Well they don't consciously go out and call people slurs or hurt them with their fists, but they are part of a system that, despite their lack of awareness, perpetuates racial and class disparity. Stuff like Redlining isn't sexy, it isn't obvious, there is no clear villain and hero. It doesn't sell movie rights or make headlines but it's a massive issue that has harmed racial equality more than almost any single official policy in American history. Most people aren't trying to do anything bad. They're just part of the system, and the system is messed up. 

So yeah the chair probably doesn't have three legs because someone is "out to get you" but it may have shoddy design because it was built in a sweat shop where profit seeking behavior determines who gets hired and fired. That's the kind of corruption I think is troublesome. 

["Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"]

I don't really see how posting press releases as news is corruption, it's not uncommon in mainstream press and is more prevalent in other kinds of enthusiast press outside of gaming. Also, that kind of coverage is exactly what the seemingly non-conspiratorial branch of #GamerGhazi is asking for - completely unbiased content that isn't garnered from personal relationships within the industry. I saw a "list of demands" going around where people were literally asking that reviews only cover topics that were less likely to be "infected" by "bias", like performance and graphics.

 

The most prescient comments I've seen yet is that the real corruption is the stuff that would never get any kind of play in some Twitter hate campaign - namely, the stuff that goes on where payola is actually a thing because there is actual money involved instead of meager sums of Patreon monthly funding and so on.

 

Also, in my opinion your posts continue to be shotgunning completely unconnected ideas together to somehow attempt to get at conclusion that "corruption is a thing". I still don't see anything convincing in what you're saying that corruption exists in indie/journalist relationships. And really, there's no convincing evidence that there's any corruption in press for bigger games, because someone would have to do some real, actual, journalistic digging to get it.

This is an interesting point. I don't really know what that has to do with objectivity in a direct sense, but I do think it is a problem that AAA games are massively over represented in games coverage. That said, like clickbait or other distasteful practices I'm sure that writing about AAA games is getting them traffic and coverage of indie games is getting them proportionally less otherwise they wouldn't do it. I mean, it's not like indies aren't trying to get their games covered.

 

Either way, I think this is something that bigger websites are becoming more aware of and they're adjusting their approach as time goes on. Jeff Gerstmann at GB has never been shy to say that the marketing departments of the AAA companies are starting to get largely autonomous and are doing a much better job than ever covering their own stuff. With video streaming of stuff like Nintendo Direct, events like Blizzcon and Call of Duty XP and company blogs like the PlayStation Blog and Major Nelson, there are lots of direct methods of communicating to gamers and thus gaming websites have a shrinking role in that process.

Do you have amnesia? Because earlier in this thread when we were discussing Patreon, you posted a link to a scientific study which lent credence to the whole "paying money to a project creates emotional investment in it, which creates bias". The Ikea effect? You posted that, remember?

And as other people have said there are other issues, some of which you've brought up, clickbait, bias towards AAA, marketing departments, etc. So yeah those are specific issues. 

This isn't a shotgun argument, I was making a very specific argument about the idea that "there is 0 corruption in the industry, and everyone who disagrees has secrete evil tingly motives". It may seem abstract to talk about how humans compartmentalize and simplify reality through generalizations but I'm making a very specific point about how people ought to make criticisms in a concrete and individual way, and the inherent fallacies in generalized sweeping statements. 

Additionally I was making a very specific criticism about saying "There is no corruption, except for the corruption there is which is a misdirection" thing Tegan said, which is just blatant double think. You can't say "there is no corruption" and then turn around and say "there is payola". There are/were issues, some of which you've even explicitly agreed to, and many of which I think the majority of this forum can agree on. Instead of being intellectually dishonest and oversimplifying things in our favor I wish people would just stick to concrete points. 

Honestly I don't know why this fight is rolling on, because it seems that some of the larger issues were already taken care, and although I think there still needs to be some refinements on those changes, and also though I think that there needs to be a shift in the games press paradigm in a larger sense, I think the most relevant issues have already been taken into account by the major outlets. I hop around the internet and it just seems to be a bunch of people sitting around in circles patting each other on the back, congratulating themselves, and talking about how everyone else sucks. And no real substantial discussion going on. 

And yes, you're right, the twitter hate campaign is just a huge hate fest right now, and I think we all know that they clearly don't give a damn. 

 

 

I suspect there isn't a lot of corruption in the games press because when there are actual, straight up examples of corruption, basically everyone moves. That does not happen if everyone else is doing it too and someone got caught.

 

The problem, as someone put it, is that the games press cannot be objective because their editorial position is that AAA games are worth writing about.

I think that's a pretty good point. It's a new industry and people are very involved in it on a personal level, which can be part of the problem, but also means that things do self correct decently fast. 

 

 

I see your point, but people also seem to want "unbiased" things that actually do state an opinion, as represented in the "demands" of #GamerGhazi people in many instances. Unbiased reviews in this case just seems to be a super lazy, awful shorthand for "reviews biased in favor of the typical gamer demographic".

I totally agree. The gamergate people are not looking for a lack of bias, they're looking for the bias that suits their purposes.

 

 

The point is that a genuinely unbiased reviewer would be someone who doesn't already like video games. Nor dislike them. Someone who has no opinions about video games.

In other words, asking for completely unbiased game reviews is like demanding reviews be written by pink unicorns.

Exactly which is why there needs to be a fundamental change in the way we talk about "objective" or "unbiased" journalism. 

 

That's not quite what I'm driving at. What I'm saying is that an unbiased reviewer would necessarily assume that games, like any other work, have to prove themselves worth writing about. To pluck an example out of thin air, let's take Alien: Isolation. No-one knows if it'll be any good. It's an adaptation of a property that has a very spotty history, it's not doing anything mechanically unique, and it's not timely because it's not out yet. If it is bad, its impact on the world will be, probably, non-existent. A game that no-one will remember in a year is not news. An unbiased journalist would conclude that it's not yet worth a story, not until either something actually newsworthy happens, in the same way that an official set visit of Guardians of the Galaxy to get a feel for whether the movie will be any good when it comes out is not actually newsworthy.

 

However, the audience is there and they don't want news or journalism. They want deets about the product they are emotionally invested in, to stoke their anticipation. The moneymen would very much to stoke that fire because it means ad spend during the crucial opening weeks will be more effective and have to do less work. Both sides have a reason to want non-news: gamers want validation of their investment by showing all the cool things that are coming in the future, the next hip product, and publishers want to build awareness through over-promising. I mean, say what you will about Apple fans, but a lot of that obsession is built on a thing they actually have.

Bingo. 

 

That isn't corruption; it's just shoddy journalism. The issue there being that the enthusiast press (which most, if not all, games-specific sites pretty much inevitably are) is usually run at razor-thin margins, usually with expenses needing to be near zero and ad revenues being very limited). Sites like Polygon (Vox Media*), Kotaku (Gawker Media) and at a lower tier The Escapist (Defy Media) have the ability to cross-market and cut better per-view/click revenue deals, but if you look at the sites that the Gaters were holding up as shining examples of the kind of journalism they want to see - places like Cinemablend's gaming section - you're probably looking at people who are paid little or nothing for their labor: they may get freebies from PR, and that may be the bargain: they produce content that pulls in some ad views - mainly copying and pasting press releases, either with minor alteration or straight out - and in return can try to get free merch.

 

One weird thing is that people without journalistic training are being lovebombed - despite one of the 'gate's multifarious demands being the frankly hilarious stipulation that you need a journalism degree before being able to be a journalist - and, in part due to that lack of journalistic training, they are responding to a level of attention and praise they have never previously received by moving further into the tank.

 

(I guess, Goodgames.us could become a media giant and give them all paying gigs. But it feels like it will be another site with limited editorial oversights, a largely amateur staff and a stock in trade of reproducing press releases and pestering publishers for review copies.)

Which way The Escapist jumps probably remains the most interesting element of this farrago from a business perspective. 

You say marinara sauce, I saw tomato sauce. How is shoddy journalism not a form of corruption exactly?

These issues of clickbait, underpaid amateur writers, etc is exactly why I keep on bringing up Old/New media issues. These issues are profit driven, and there's problems created by that. 

["Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"]

The failure to discover any actual corruption is because the intent was never to find any to begin with, along with deliberate misdirection as to where that corruption might lie.

I don't know. I think that's far to broad a statement. 

The drama has been blown out of proportion, many people are saying things or taking stands not because of an authentic belief, but rather because of a cultural identification, bigotry, or pure emotional immaturity. I think there's also people who sincerely believe that there is an issue in the games industry worth addressing. Rather than making huge sweeping generalizations I think it's better to be specific and individual, case by case. Those people who believe there is an issue may also be mislead but only by addressing them specifically can you have a substantive discussion. 

This kind of thinking is a problem with how humans think. We can't hold a lot of information in our heads so we simplify it. Dunbar's Number and all that jazz. It's easier to lump everyone into groups and labels, than to deal with individuals because there are too many individuals to deal with. Easy abstractions over concrete individuals

I mean you say there's no corruption but then say there's misdirection where that corruption might lie, right? But obviously, we can agree there's some level of corruption. The way journalists basically pass on press releases as articles, the way the games industry is covered almost like an extension of AAA marketing departments? That's corruption that most people can agree on. So saying there's absolutely no corruption is inaccurate. I would think you would believe that too since you refer to there being misdirection to where the corruption is. You can't have both no corruption and misdirection from corruption. 

I wonder what's going to come of all this. I kind of thought that once Polygon required disclosures it was going to die down, but it seems people are just going to keep going at each other's throats. 

Personally I'm trying to keep focused on the individuals in my life rather than getting too caught up in easy abstractions. And also keep making things. 

[Holy Guacamole! Experimental MMO from 1999. DAVID mother-effin BOWIE!]

Woah that is pretty crazy. In some ways we have that personal voice on the internet again, through social media, but it's also filtered more through PR strategists etc. The freewheeling, de-centralized nature of the internet etc, is sort of gone now. 

[Holy Guacamole! Experimental MMO from 1999. DAVID mother-effin BOWIE!]

I don't have anything to say on the original game, but in terms of multimedia weirdness, I used to spend forever played 3D Dinosaur Adventure. There wasn't actually any adventure involved, it was just going through a gaudy 3D museum and sometimes playing educational video games. Then you may get rewarded with a 3D video starring a T-Rex. It even came with red and blue 3D glasses for some scenes.

Once I was looking through some junk in the backroom of the company that gave me my first animation job I got out of college in Houston and I saw boxes for 3D Dinosaur Adventure and I realized they did all the 3D graphics for the game twenty years previous. Was kind of neat.

 

Actually I saw that reviewed. I grew up in the middle of nowhere so I didn't get a lot of stuff for my computer, but recently I've been watching reviews about old DOS games and stuff, and they covered this specific game actually. 

I think a large part of it is that when the internet began to take off, it was just simpler to make a website than it was to make a fully executable program. Which is understandable but also disappointing. Now that we're getting more powerful and easy to use 3rd party engines, and more people using program specific interactions because of touch screen apps etc, I hope we'll see more of this kind of stuff come out. I'm actually considering pursuing grad school for this reason, since lately I've talked with a couple of people involved with it on the academic side of things. 

 

David Bowie was hyped on video games in the nineties apparently. I remember him most notably as the weird blue guy from Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Great game.

Ooooh yeah, I remember that. Bowie is an interesting person. He was into a lot of unusual things and didn't just nail himself down to one thing. I wonder if he plays video games today, or if he was just briefly interested in it. 

Anybody know of any current multimedia projects? I was at a VR thing and this guy was telling me about his companies educational VR and AR project. It sounded a little top heavy though, not sure how good it would actually be, seemed a little bit like it was designed by engineers, and not enough creative director or industrial design guys were involved. That tends to be a problem in game industry type stuff. You get specs decided by MBAs and then implemented by engineers, and then you get wonky ass things like the Epson Moverio glasses (which I tried at a con, and are total shit). The only people who put any effort at all into the aesthetic and industrial design of these kinds of projects are Apple and Google, and sometimes Microsoft. I guess it's just too expensive, or it's not easily quantifiable and therefore hard to pitch.  

 

[Today is Labor Daybor! (The Labor Movement and Video Games)]

In Wabash Cannonball also known as "Chicago Express", you use your capital to buy controlling-shares of railroad-companies. If you own shares then you can decide where the railroad is built. After each round, players recieve a payout that is profit from each railroad divided by the portion of shares owned. So for example: if I own two shares if the green railroad and only one other player owns a share, the I would get 2/3 of that railroad's profit which I can then use to outbid other players for additional shares.

It is a game though. One thing I don't like about it is that the advantages of the monopoly aren't expressed clearly in the game because it ends too soon. I'd like it if I had the option to grind the other players out of business using the capital I've accumulated. Instead, a winner is declared when it is obvious who will be able to do so.

 

 

There's a game like that. Can't remember what it's called.

 

 

I think it would make the game less fun (I don't think Monopoly is fun), but it would be a more powerful rhetoric (like Monopoly).

I love the idea of choosing "fun" mode or "rhetoric" mode at the beginning of the game.

You know I remember reading a story that Monopoly was actually created as a critique of monopolies. Kind of a 1930s satire of them in game form. 

Ah yes, the wiki article confirms this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)#Early_history

The game originally came from a game called "The Landlord Game" which was meant to illustrate the ideas of Henry George, the founder of Georgism which is kind of like the modern day "free market socialists" you see crowding around the Universal Basic Income proposals in Europe and Canada. 

 

Yeah, game developers are basically expendable because people who want to do it are a dime a dozen. If there's something you're not willing to put up with, there's always someone younger and more naïve who will, so you have no leverage to say no. (Of course, once they actually get in, that spirit will be crushed quickly, but by then they're in the same situation.)

 

When I was in film school, there was a huge amount of focus on teaching us the union regulations and how big a deal it is if you require your crew to work even a few minutes longer than the scheduled work day. It was pretty jarring to go from that to an industry where people act like it's some kind of badge of honor to work 80-hour weeks with no additional compensation, and if you don't think that's a good deal, you just look like the lazy one.

You know that's another thing I've noticed. There's a huge influence of industry in the education of game makers. In my experience a large chunk of people in the industry are not from normal academic backgrounds, they're usually from technical colleges which have good ties within the industry. A lot of those colleges are not really academic institutions in the traditional sense, they're often for profit, and some of them can be pretty shady like the famous The Art Institutes which are often times not even properly accredited and have been sued recently by the government for misrepresenting their services. Places like Full Sail have slightly better reps and while the programs are more rigorous I've not seen a lot of people happy with their experience at them (especially considering the cost)

We're just now getting some serious programs at normal accredited universities, like the NYU Game Lab, or USC's Cinematic Arts program. That for profit education connection is probably a good deal to blame for that lack of knowledge about unions etc, because it's not in the interest of Full Sail to teach their students how to stand up for themselves because their pockets are being lined by the naivety of students who won't stand up for themselves. 

Also so far a large part of the conversation has focused on how there is a problem with labor in the games industry but I actually think this is a much greater problem with games as narrative expression. I don't want to seem unempathetic, since I do have huge problems with the way the games industry is run but I also think it's falling a bit short. After all, according to the latest Gamasutra poll, the median salary for game devs is 70k, and I've heard in Europe its in the range of 100k. Median salary in America is like 25k. Game devs are, compared to the population at large, very, very, well off. And also those numbers are probably skewed a little bit because the Gamasutra is probably not taking into account all the freelancers and part time people who are exploited by the industry but even so, game devs are generally better off than the average person.

The issue to me is not so much that the games industry doesn't have a strong labor movement. In many ways it doesn't really need one, it's high enough skilled jobs that devs generally have decent bargaining power. They aren't getting their full market worth, but arguing that they aren't getting their full market worth is ACTUALLY upholding a system of capitalism, not rebuking it. The problem is that because everyone is generally pretty well off, the voice of working class, or labor movements are often misrepresented or under represented. The games industry is inherently bourgeoisie and consumerist. (after all the core of the "gamer" culture comes from those who could afford super expensive console systems back in the day). 

Now I said inherently but I don't actually think it's really inherent, I just think it's very strongly tied to the current way the medium is represented, understood, and the way the industry is focused. And I'm not even arguing against capital per se, so much as the lack of recognition of the unbalanced systems which capital creates. What I'd like to see, even more than fairer working conditions for devs, is authentic expressions in the medium that critique capitalism and acknowledge the thorny issues that wealth, property, etc pose. 

I think more and more devs are starting to realize this too, because as globalization and outsourcing continue to rise, many of their bargaining powers are being eroded and so  the problems of the common man are becoming more relevant to their experience. 

Also I can think of one dev who is involved in the kind of anti-capital thinking we've discussed here. Jason Rohrer really practices what he preaches about indie games. I don't know if I'd ever go as extreme as him but he's an admirable guy. 

["Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"]

Nothing about their stance makes sense. Period. Am I not supposed to trust a White House reporter because they're chummy with some White House staffers? Should I not trust a reporter who's embedded with a squadron in a war zone because they happen to have made some friends among the soldiers? Is a Wall Street reporter not reliable because they sometimes grab a few drinks with people who work in finance? Should a film critic's reviews be called into question because they network at Sundance? If a food critic goes to a private function catered by a chef with a successful restaurant, should I not trust their restaurant reviews anymore?

 

Women in the public eye are always subjected to undue criticism from both inside and outside where they work (see Jill Abramson being criticized because she was "bossy"), but I don't think I've ever seen anything of this magnitude, either in size or in vitriol.

Actually I think that wall street reporter and finance example is a pretty good example of why there is need for disclosure in mainstream media. As I've said before on this thread, authoritarian "News as Truth Givers" is outmoded, and has always been unrealistic to human nature. People are subjective, and so there should be focus on making sure there is transparency rather than objectivity. 

 

I just don't know what to do anymore. Its just heartbreaking. I'm convinced that this is all the work of a no doubt small, but very adept faction that just wants to watch the world burn. And the problem is, they're winning. No matter how few of them there may be, it's enough. It takes far less work to destroy than create, and here I am on the very fringes of the community wondering if there's even any point in continuing to pay attention. On the one hand, I feel like maybe it's my fault and the fault of people like me for not spending more time speaking up. On the other hand it seems like all social media is doing is bringing people pain. No matter how many times I gather the courage to tell someone, "I love your work," or throw them a few dollars on Patreon, it'll never balance the efforts of the people out there who only want to destroy.

 

I want to believe that there's something I can do to help the world be a better place, but I honestly don't see how right now.

I think that progress is being made and people shouldn't give up. Things are changing for the better, people have to keep the struggle in mind in their everyday life and things will continue to change. It's honestly a never ending battle probably but I hope people don't give up. 

 

I forget where it was pointed out recently, but the most profitable thing for Twitter seems to be allowing harassers to largely run free, then having just enough of a sop in place for their targets that they don't desert the platform. Edit: That sounds like a hard thing to balance in practice, but I guess you can bank on people's social networks keeping them there more than abuse is likely to scare most away.

 

I've been in a few discussions today with people looking for an alternative, fed up of a platform that systemically enables harassers.

Twitter is a pretty terrible social media platform. It's character limit basically forces it to be so bite sized and digestible as to make substantial discussion or nuance impossible. It's an oven built out of gunpowder. 

 

I've consistently seen journalists from many of the larger sites, Gamespot, IGN, Polygon*(I originally said Idle Thumbs here but that was a typo, I think I'm getting acclimated to Danielle being on the show regularly), Giantbomb talking about this very topic on podcasts and such. I believe the words Patrick Klepek used to talk about it were something to the effect, "I felt like I needed to learn how to stream because my job will depend on it in the coming years, because the written word is slowly going away."

I think this is the conflict we're seeing between new and old media (or perhaps new and newer media at this point). Things are changing. I forget if I already linked it but Press.Pause.Play. is a really great documentary on this subject sorta as it applies to digital media creators 

 

The thing that upsets me the most about all of this is it should never have been an issue.

 

This whole thing has raised some questions about games journalism which is fine but everything surrounding it was extremely childish and disgusting. I am glad you guys are all every rational and are able to have a nice conversation about it. I hope this is the last time something like this happens because it is super fucked up. For reference when all of this stuff hit my mom called me to ask me about it, which is super gross and not cool.

Also I think it is worth saying, I am sure most of you know this but some people don't. Making games is really hard, takes a lot of time and you tend to close yourself from people who don't make games. So your only real chance at relationships is with other games people. When you spend all of your time traveling or working on your game you need to be close to people who do the same. Also everyone I have become close with in games have been the sweetest people on the planet. 

I hope that things are going to get better and we can start rebuilding from this mess. 

Also I think it's natural that game people are close to game people, but it's also not always the most healthy thing. I understand the mechanics of why insularity exists, and it's not special to games, the same thing happens in the film industry and stuff too, but I think it's still a negative thing that stunts the openness and growth of the medium. 

 

Silence, I feel, ultimately favors the harassers not the harassed.  So while I understand that fear, I'm also a bit more heartless about it when it comes to the big sites.  If you want to call yourself a journalist, and most of the writers for the big sites do, then you don't get to sideline yourself when shit like this goes down.  There's always the option of writing a staff post as well, so no individual writer takes the heat for it. 

Strongly agreed

 

Also, Rami Ismael made a short post about gamer gate this morning, with an absolutely incredible disclosure statement prefacing it 

Love this. 

[Today is Labor Daybor! (The Labor Movement and Video Games)]

That's the thing, we always hear about this stuff over and over again. Nothing really makes an impact no matter what bad news we hear. Just some people cry foul on Facebook or the comments section and a few other developers take great pride in their 90 hour work weeks because they are so filled with imagination, passion, and creativity they must show it off. Gamers buy the games, don't give a shit, cycle continues.

 

I feel like the only way something like that situation would turn around is if everyone had the gall to just get together, say fuck the stupid Crytek game and just not go to work until pay AND working conditions change. It's a fucking multimillion dollar company, they almost all are it seems. It's like paying people is the last on some of these scumlord owner's minds. But no, game developer Stockholm Syndrome is apparently more important. I think most of this took place here in Austin as well. I suppose the attitude at most game developer get togethers are a bunch of meek and desperate people, but Christ, if your paycheck doesn't arrive in two weeks, tell your boss you aren't going to work. If you get fired, file for unemployment. Of course they were all probably paid contract and going to an office, using work computers, and basically acting like full time workers, just without the benefits so they could easily be let go later and never collect unemployment.

 

Whenever I hear bullshit about working in games, I just hear Remo in my head saying, "Videeeeoooooo gaaaaaames!" Makes me feel better.

I think the conditions in the industry have so much to do with the fact that it's a dream for people. But then again the same is true of film, and film does have it's fair share of problems, but the major studios do not. I think some of that has to do with the youth of the industry, and also the single minded focus of many people who get into games. 

[Today is Labor Daybor! (The Labor Movement and Video Games)]

This is an interesting topic! I have absolutely nothing I can contribute.

 

Not every country has seen the labor movement dismantled in the way that it has in the US and the UK, but thinking of games from countries with a strong labour movement, I'm not sure I detect any particularly strong differences in philosophy. Most of the games that attempt to depict the 'real' world tend to be American, British or Japanese. I can't really think of a lot of games outside of these countries that have room to express their views on work. Michel Ancel's games are high fantasy and science fantasy, and while there's a non-violent resistance movement in Beyond Good and Evil, Jade is a freelance photographer with, it seems, no real job stability. I think the closest Australian-made games have gotten to depicting the real world are Destroy All Humans!, where you play as an alien mostly oblivious to human society, Ninja Pizza Girl, where you're an entry-level employee with no union protection, and early versions of what became The Bureau, where you play as a government agent because of course the government's going to try and take care of alien threats.

I had totally forgotten about Beyond Good and Evil but that's a really great example. Also Michel is French and there's a stronger tradition of those kinds of movements in French culture so it's not too surprising. 

 

Great topic!  From what I hear about working conditions in the video game industry, some sort of union seems to make a ton of sense.

 

Something like the Screenwriters Guild?

 

www.wga.org

I think some of the issue is that there is an oversupply of labor in the game's market so as a result, creating a union is pretty hard these days. Who would join? Only people who want to get into the industry. I doubt many veterans would join, and that's a bit of a problem. Though it's funny to point out that Reagan was actually the President of SAG (Screen Actors Guild). That's some real irony right there for you. If SAG wasn't already a deeply invested part of Hollywood at this point, I doubt it would be created today. And while I love the freedom of the internet and youtube I also worry that we're seeing an eroding of creative people's ability to negotiate. I've got an article in the hopper I'm working on that subject right now.  

 

It's interesting that you draw the correlation between when video games started and the weakening of labor's power in the US, though the odd thing is that creatives/labor were quite abused even very early on (the whole thing with Atari not giving credit, the ridiculous work schedules that led to stuff like E.T.).  And into modern day, we still hear horror stories about people being ridiculously overworked.  The video game industry historically has all of the kinds of pressure one would expect to lead towards some kind of unionization, and yet nothing of the kind has happened. 

 

Thematically though, you do see basic capitalism being proselytized through most games.  A very American "work hard and you'll be rewarded" kind of mentality when it comes to how work or business is portrayed. 

 

I think this is also filled out in the actual play too though, players expect to be rewarded for their work and mastery. If that's not what happens then the game is frustrating or poorly designed to them. The whole concept of gamification is based on a capitalist sense of proportional reward.

I think the desire for action and reward is not inherently opposed to the heart of a labor movement. In fact I think labor movements are very much about re-establishing the balance of meritocracy by recognizing the ways that capital creates an uneven playing field. But certainly that "chase the cheese" part of our hind brain is the thing which both inspires gamification and capitalism's popularity. "There are no poor Americans, merely temporarily embarrassed millionaires" har har

I do think there probably is an inherent challenge depicting that imbalance because frustration is an enemy to engagement, but I do think it's possible. I wonder if the recent crop of super hard games are perhaps an avenue towards discussing these kinds of issues. So much depends on the luck of birth in Rogue-like games after all. 

You would think the crime genre would also be a good place to examine power structures, but I think many of those games end up playing towards the power fantasy. 

 

I'm very interested in economic systems being expressed in computer-games. At first I was looking for games that would show alternatives to capitalist systems, but after looking around I realized what I was missing was games with capitalist systems. I had assumed that capitalism was the default economic system in games, but in actuality, economic systems in games are typically a central power allocating labor based on one person's decisions (the player). Thus far the best critique of capitalism comes from games that attempt to mimic it. The two I've been most impressed with are Wabash Cannonball and La Havre, both are board-games ported to the iphone with AI opponents.

I got some recommendations for Victoria 2 but I have only spent an hour or so trying to learn how to play it. From what I can tell, you adjust the skills of the labor centrally by adjusting tax-breaks while having to deal with market forces outside of your national borders. Another game to keep your eye on is Offworld Trading Company whose victory-conditions look to be based on the inevitable monopolies of pure capitalist systems. I've only read about that one, it's currently in an expensive early-access.

Ah yeah board games are a really good place for this. Strategy games like Civ too. I don't know much about Wabash Cannonball, could you talk about that a little more?

 

I'm pretty sure that this has been linked before, but this article in Jacobin is a pretty interesting look at labor issues in the games industry. It points out how some of the biggest obstacles to improving labor conditions in the industry is the giant pool of young workers who want nothing more than to make a game, and subsequently are willing to accept low wages, long hours, and little to no job security. 

 

Also, Jackalope, there's no need to say that you don't want to get too political. This is a political issue, but pretty much everything worth talking about is. I believe talking about labor and class issues in games is important, but I'd be skeptical of saying that we need to talk about these in the place of women's/LGBT issues. It's been a common move in leftist political movements to tell women that their concerns would be dealt with after class issues had been sorted it. We don't want to make the same mistake here.

Excellent points. Yeah, the reason for saying I didn't want to get too political is I didn't want to scare people off by seeming too radical. I do essentially identify as an anarchist, but I'm pretty pragmatic about the whole thing. To me the fundamental thing isn't politics, it's being good to your fellow human beings. Part of that is recognizing the effects of power in society but I also differ from a lot of other people because I'm more in the Tolstoyian vein of things. Change for society comes from within the self rather than from the violent overthrow of the powers that be. 

And also yes, I was a little worried that I would sound like I was minimizing feminist issues (as I'm also aware of those problems you mentioned). Not my intention in the least. I do get a little frustrated though because a lot of the video game feminist movement centers around upper class white female demographics, and this "gentrification" of the feminist movement is something that has been discussed a lot in feminist circles, especially by women of color in the Third Wave. I think this is one reason intersectionality and Kyriarchy are important concepts to keep in mind. This is especially a problem since "video games feminism" is not only isolated from a larger critique of power structures, but also from mainstream feminist work in general. Anyway the point of this post was not to diminish that, rather it was to enlarge the scope of criticism and discussion. The misogyny stuff is the most glaring and gross example of these unbalanced power structures in video game culture. I think issues of class are also worth discussing too, and I think binding all these things under a common theme of resisting coercion and hierarchy is important. 

 

["Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"]

Am I the only one who thinks that disclosure is ridiculous (and probably meant to be)? Is that what everyone wants tacked onto every article about indie game devs? "Full Disclosure: I met a person briefly at a pub during PAX"

 

 

I hope not, but I wouldn't be surprised. It's not enough now to consider journalism by its actual content. We have to use the data glut of the internet to go digging around individual journalists' backgrounds to determine their relative merits, because hidden motives and payola are everywhere these days and impossible to detect otherwise, right?

 

Please everyone, tell me explicitly if you like or dislike the person about whom you are writing, on the basis of which I will believe or disbelieve your article. If you're quick about it, you'll save me the effort of even having to read it!

 

I think disclosure, ideally, means embracing the subjective nature of journalism and focusing more on the personal experience of that person. Which in effect is a higher level of disclosure, but doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to have to have a paragraph label before every article. 

 

I'm starting to think that additional disclosures of potential conflicts of interest wouldn't slow the invasion of privacy and mobbing. It's the thrill of the hunt. If journalists did provide additional disclosures, young sherlocks-in-training would just circle them in red, write "SEE!" beside it, and post.

I wonder if an actual ARG would fill their voids. Or maybe ARGs are exacerbating all this in the first place. Maybe they are addicted to the magical realism and agency of interactive viral marketing.

To me the entire point of disclosure has nothing to do with avoiding mobbing etc. I mean I want mobbing to stop but the point of disclosure and a more open media isn't to prevent the 4chan idiots, it's because games journalism needs to grow up and stop talking about everything in these pseudo official objectivist frameworks. Give me gonzo. 

Also saw this article recently and thought it might be kind of relevant to the thread https://www.pw.org/content/the_problem_of_entitlement_a_question_of_respect

It's sort of indirect but it's talking about the conflict over "entitlement" between young and old writers and poets. I think some of this stuff might be a bit of a generational thing too. As I've said before some of this might be more Old Media versus New Media than anything else. Old writers and poets complain that new writers and poets are entitled because they don't give respect to published authors and the Gatekeepers of Literature. But for a generation who grew up reading and writing stuff online, all that old media stuff is useless. Who the fuck cares if you got in this years American Anthology of Short Stories? If I think your story is bad, I think it's bad. And a lot of what is called "entitlement" by these older authors is really that unwillingness to accept an appeal to authority and the default level of prestige associated with those kinds of writings. This isn't directly related, but I see a similar conflict between accusations of cronyism, cliqueishness, and a general cynicism from younger people about the meritocracy of the real world. 

[Today is Labor Daybor! (The Labor Movement and Video Games)]

I was playing Bioshock Infinite earlier this year and had progressed through the story to the point where you're interacting a lot with the Vox Populi and it just started falling apart for me. I think there's a lot of cool historical stuff that Ken Levine was trying to pull from but I think it also tends to fall flat and become very 1 dimensional. Specifically as it applies to the Vox Populi it reminded me of something I once read that basically went "There is no true leftist political force in America, because without a serious critique of capitalism there is no leftist politics, only liberalism". 

Now this post isn't meant to be overly political or anything but I do find it interesting to discuss. Video games have a lot of issues with sexism, racism, etc but they do tend to fall into a generally more "liberal" category than I think a lot of Americans would self identify with. This is true in the same way that Hollywood is known to lean liberal but is still mired in the kinds of exploitation and discrimination that runs counter to that. Video games tend to lean "liberal" in a lot of ways but very rarely do I see an authentically leftist politic expressed in the medium. There is very rarely an even very realistic portrayal of labor movements and such in games. Ken Levine was certainly familiar with this stuff though, as he worked in Boston, and the Haymarket Massacre was important to the history of the region and was also one of the inciting events for the creation of Labor Day and yet I think the Vox Populi's rhetoric is pretty thin and almost automatically dismissed by the protagonist. Booker is a liberal, not a revolutionary (despite fucking up every single cop he can find. He's not exactly Gandhi you know?). 

So why is this like this? I think there are a number of reasons. 

1) Video games rose to prominence in a period of deregulation and destruction of the Labor Movement. It's actually pretty surprising when you go back and see how broad the mainstream support for the Labor Movement was back in the late 19th century and early 20th. Video games really started hitting in the 80s when the Labor Movement was starting to gasp it's last breath. 

2) Video games have largely been made by non-unionized workers. Video games used to take highly specialized skills that required so much background and education that there was no real need for a union. Also while the ideal of "workers owning the means of production" is very difficult in a factory setting, it's relatively easier in video games where many people do already have the tools needed to make a game of their own. 

3) Video games are historical tied as an industry to Venture Capitalism and the tech industry, and therefore often trace their organization and cultural roots to software development companies. Now of course there are some anarcho-capitalist types out there in Silicon Valley but it's still a pretty standard moderate American republicanism overall. 

Once again don't want to sound like I'm getting too political I just thought it was interesting to think about and discuss. A lot of the issues that we are talking about in video game circles focus on gender identity etc, but I don't often see those discussions connected very well to a larger leftist/anarchist/green/socialist/etc rhetoric. I think that certainly skews the conversation in a very particular way and I'd be curious to see if anyone knows any games that deal with these issues in a serious way?

 

[Feminism]

Well, the comment about tone policing was in response to a different comment of yours but it's applicable to the first part too, I suppose. She disagreed with both the content (eg taking the harassers at face value) as well as the tone of the column you linked, and she provided several examples.  You responded to her by saying "I think your interpretation is uncharitable."

 

"People (women) would get farther if they were not so mean sometimes" is pretty much tone policing.  And I mean, it has some validity occasionally, but it's demonstrably false in this whole situation.  Sarkeesian's videos are as academic as they come.  And yet.

Uncharitable does not mean "mean". Uncharitable means "without sufficient benefit of doubt given". It's kind of jargony I guess, so maybe I should had defined my use of the term but what I mean by using it is that sufficient benifit of the doubt has not be given and that the focus should be placed more on the substance of the argument than on the tone. At least that's my experience using the term in these kinds of contexts and that's what I meant. Also I def don't think tone is an issue with Sarkeesian. 

 

Someone tried to 3D render that horrible Spiderwoman variant cover and oh boy are the results... well, the stuff of nightmares:

 

 

Seeing that led me to this really interesting Tumblr where the the main point is he posts completely unrealistic drawings of women and the people submit "redraws" where they try to adapt or modify the art to actually fit human physiology. The most fascinating part is that if the goal is to make these drawings look really sexy, most of the redraws are pretty much just as conventionally attractive but manage to not contort the body or misrepresent how a body is formed.

I still cannot understand how this shit gets passed over in mainstream comics. The very best comics have never been the ones that indulge in this kind of nonsense, and yet people keep on making it    

In general I'd say the whole focus on superheros in comics is silly to begin with. Why can't we just make comics like people do online that are cool and funny, and maybe include heroes but don't always?

["Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"]

This is a bit of a tangent, but given the second half of the topic it is something I have been wondering about in the last few days.  I've never been a big reader of kotaku or gaming blogs, I mean I'm aware of the content but for the most part skim what I do read.  Since this topic took off I began actually reading many of the press release and interview type articles and each one seems to almost be taken from a template.  Most of it is pretty basic stuff, technical details, who is making the game, where it can be played, etc.  Then the majority of these articles seem to be obsessed with the creator's inspirations.  Each of these articles puts such an incredible emphasis on conformity and comparison to other games.  I understand why this is, mainly because the act of play isn't easily relatable to anything but the act of play, but it seems to be emphasized to a fault.  Certainly this is nothing new, as evidenced by the meets-meets-meets running gag on the podcast, but should we start holding games writers accountable for inspiring this kind of insularity in the community?  I feel like many crying foul, while legitimate concerns do exist, are simply unable to articulate themselves because they are taught to talk about their hobby in rigid but somehow nebulous terms that often play on nostalgia.  Aesthetics are described in terms of the aesthetics of other games, mechanics are described by comparing them to other mechanics, etc.  Personally I don't think they are causing the problem, but most likely exacerbating it.

 

The situation I imagine is someone who is still young and is learning to talk about their hobby based on the way other people are talking about it.  Then suddenly a game like depression quest comes along, which can't easily be talked about in the same way, and this person feels left out.  Then an otherwise reasonable individual becomes enraged for no other reason than not being able to discuss this new thing in the same way that previous things had been discussed.  Suddenly it seems as though this part of their lives they've invested so much into is leaving them behind, and that makes them angry.

I think  some of that is inherent in any medium. Film and fine art painting do the same thing. I think it's a larger problem in games though for 2 reasons. 1) The medium is younger and smaller. Film has over a century to draw off of, and painting several thousand. Games really only has 4-3 decades at most. 2) Many video game enthusiasts are incredibly sheltered from other mediums. I think if you took a poll of the average self-identified gamer their favorite movies would be something Star Wars or Marvel related and I'd say a sizeable chunk haven't read a book in years. Actually that's true of the general population in general but schools still force kids to read and so there are common touch stones that people draw off of. I don't want that to sound judgmental, but I do think it's a huge contributing factor. "Video Game Musicians" remind me a lot of "Christian Rock". People will listen to some really piss poor music because the lyrics reference Mario/Jesus. The cultural identity comes before the actual importance of the medium to a lot of people for various historical/cultural reasons. I think a lot of this is hopefully growing pains and will wear off, and one reason I like indie games so much is because they seem to have a wider familiarity with other mediums. 

Other mediums do the whole "meets meets meets" thing, and actually that's famously how to structure the logline for spec scripts in film, but because film has such a larger breadth to draw on as a medium it's less glaring a problem. And also because film grew up along side many other mediums, while video games has largely kept to itself. Queen or Trent Reznor famously have done lots of film soundtracks but video games almost always turns inwards to self references rather than gathering from outside it's sphere. That's another reason video games feels rather incestuous to me in it's touchstones.

[Holy Guacamole! Experimental MMO from 1999. DAVID mother-effin BOWIE!]

Very much agreed. 

Also I like hypertext. I grew up with it so I didn't actually understand it was a special thing in academia until about 6 or so years ago, but even the basic added function of hypertext is cool. I wish I could talk in hypertext. 


I've been to a couple of VR jams here in Austin and it's pretty interesting. I see a lot of old Silicone Valley type guys who made their money in the 80s and 90s kind of get back into the game because they're excited for all this VR and AR applications. There's some pretty goofy projects being funded but still it's exciting to see. I think smart phones and tablets really helped open the door for that kind of stuff. Actually I think there's a good more that could be done on those platforms too. It's just very hard because there's a lot of theory and not a lot of best practices established. But people who grew up with digital media have a better intuitive sense for what works and doesn't I think, which also helps.

Oh yeah and I met a girl who does design at IBM and there's some crazy shit they're doing with Watson and interaction design. 
 

[Feminism]

I believe that the thing that started this whole line of discussion was my original comment:

 

 

If I wasn't clear, "[not keeping] it together 100% of the time" was my way of saying that making petty remarks and jabs are reactions that shouldn't invalidate or undermine the sentiments of these feminists. I'm not saying that the campaign should shift from substance to personal attacks, I'm simply saying that if you're under pressure and harassment at all hours you deserve a few slip-ups where you might not be so nice. That's far from "stirring the shit pot".

I think the word "deserve some slip ups" is kind of weird but maybe that's getting into too abstract philosophy. 

But yeah, I don't think that personal attacks invalidate people's positions. Ad Hom is a fallacy but there's also the "Fallacy Fallacy" you know? I'm just saying I wish people would focus on getting shit done. Also I think some people (this isn't specific) are saying some pretty scummy things. Like virgin shaming which is the flip side of the coin of slut shaming. That's just gross. Asexual people and all that. 

Also this comic is awesome and feels pretty relevant. 

 

[Holy Guacamole! Experimental MMO from 1999. DAVID mother-effin BOWIE!]

Dadgum this thing is insane. 

Worlds was an experimental MMO chat thingy that was started in 1995. It's like a chat thing? David Bowie was involved? It was meant to have like real time concerts take place in virtual space. and stuff. It was classic Metaverse pipe dream.  And it's still running today!

This video does a pretty good job of introducing it though it does have a little bit of that "lol random" Let's Player type humor in it. Still it looks really fascinating. 

Does anyone else miss the days of "multimedia"? Where there were like weird goofy experiments still being done with computers and games? Educational games, and weird interactive encyclopedias and other things that weren't "applications" but also not "games". I would like to see more stuff like that. I'd like to make stuff like that. 

I kind of hope the Oculus will spur that back into the light. I'm also kind of hopeful that the Facebook buy helps encourage that. Shit would be cool. 




 

[Feminism]

I think mockery is one of the most valuable tools at our disposal though. And, since their appearance is to some degree a manifestation of their ideals of masculinity, that's fair game. I might refrain, though, from mocking things which they have less control over -- their bone structure, follicular deficiencies, etc

I'll give it that some nice sharp satire is good. The Daily Show always brings out some pretty great bits. I don't think most of twitter users really climb to that level of wit or insightfulness. 

 

 If there is rhetoric claiming that the moment any member of an oppressed group succumbs to their urge to retaliate against the violence of their oppressors, then they have proven themselves to be less than worthy of not being oppressed, then that rhetoric is in the service of keeping those people down.

I did not say that, or argue that. That is not my position. 

 

 

The thing about Martin Luther King, Jr. is that the violence won, in a way. He was killed, his movement was hijacked, and his dream was derailed. So yeah, I fully believe that reasoned discourse, built around non-violent principles, is an essential component of being a kind, good, and progressive person, but I also do not want to deny people their anger. We shouldn't have to be saints to have things change for the better. If there is rhetoric claiming that the moment any member of an oppressed group succumbs to their urge to retaliate against the violence of their oppressors, then they have proven themselves to be less than worthy of not being oppressed, then that rhetoric is in the service of keeping those people down. Demanding that people be superhuman in order to weather attacks on their very humanity really just isn't the way forward, in my considered opinion.

 

I also resent the notion that responding with the smallest bit of mockery to a torrent of abuse and harassment somehow puts us all on the same level. There is just no way that you can draw a moral equivalency between occasionally joking about the apparent hygiene of misogynist assholes and persistently posting graphic descriptions of female mutilation to an anonymous twitter account.

I strongly disagree with that statement that MLK lost. Shit is real bad, but I think it's disingenuous to say that he didn't help make some progress. I also get annoyed when people say this kind of thing because it's often used as an excuse for apathy and not giving a shit or being involved in making things better. Cynicism is easy as fuck. 

Also I'm not saying that everything is equivalent. We're talking in huge generalizations here so it doesn't even make sense to make a statement like that because there's a vast number of possible statements involved. This is a case by case basis thing, so I'm only speaking to a principle not a specific comparison. 

Also people don't have to be saints to make things better. MLK had his own skeletons in the closet. Gandhi was into some reaaaaallly weird shit. Gandhi actually supported Hitler. Nelson Mandela got in trouble for... like bombing little kids. Humans do a lot of bad stuff, nobody's perfect. 

 

I read it and had the same exact take.  He's taking their claims at face value and his ultimate conclusion is "nah, you're totally right, this Zoe chick is bullshit."

 

Tone policing sucks, man.  People are allowed to have reactions.

I think actually what she was doing was tone policing. I'm saying that tone shouldn't be people's primary focus. Which is the opposite of tone policing...    

But yeah people are allowed to have their reactions, that's completely fair. 

 

Pretty much every time a white person uses Martin Luther King as an example of the importance of polite, principled, gently-gently protest, I find this passage, from "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" springs ineluctably to mind:

 

 

Here I find it, again, highly appropriate.

Look I said it was hacky, I know that. I'm not a dummy. But if I make a reference to Tolstoy or Dorothy Day it's simply not going to hit as well because it's less accessible and also less potent an image. 

I believe in direct action. I believe it must be carried out in a peaceful and love filled manner. Stirring the shit pot is not the end goal and is counter productive to the cause. Direct action causes unrest but it gets shit done. Ad Hominem screeds do not push the conversation forward. What's more important, progress, or one's self righteousness?