Naldean

Just catching up on the thread, so sorry if people aren't interested in returning to the Kotaku thing. Just a couple of things I wanted to respond to when reading through: What you are talking about there is violating the author's copyright. Nobody is claiming that the company has no right to their copyright, and if this were something like distributing a build of the game or a copy of the script, you'd have an argument there. But it's not that. The articles which led to this blacklisting were nothing approaching that. They were "confirmation" of the existence of a product and a few high-level details. Kotaku didn't break any embargoes or NDAs, though. If they did, it would be a different story. For what it's worth, I agree with some others that it's sort of amazing to me that people think Kotaku was in the wrong here. I don't work in games, but I do work in the tech industry, and this kind of leak happens all the time. When it does people get upset, but with the leaker not with the publication. I also think Bethesda and Ubisoft have the right to decide who gets access to their people and unreleased games, so I can't really say they are in the wrong (though it does sound like their behavior was pretty childish given the nature of the content which led to the blacklist, and their refusal to talk to Kotaku in any way). But this highlights the actual ethical issue in the industry which has been there all along and GG completely ignored (and in some cases supported) - a lot of games coverage relies on access and is therefore at the mercy of publishers. It's certainly possible to run a games site that doesn't rely on access, but it limits the types of content you can produce. This is not new or surprising, but it's something that consumers should be concerned about.

I haven't really followed the Star Citizen/Escapist mess closely, but it strikes me as a little weird to position it as "consumer protection" or whatever. Star Citizen has been raising tons of money for a long time now, and it's always seemed pretty likely that the people sinking thousands of dollars into this thing are bound to be disappointed no matter what comes out. It's not like GamerGate believes those things either, at least when it applies to anyone other than themselves. Their entire reason for being is to try to silence anyone who criticizes games for reasons they deem invalid.

Even controlling for family income doesn't fully account for economic status between different groups. From what I've read, an average US middle-class black family lives in a neighborhood that is poorer than a poor white family. Opportunity isn't just about your family, it's also about your community. I don't actually believe the claims that there's no impact on race, gender, or sexual orientation among the 1%, but even if that were true it's irrelevant.

How they can continue to believe that they are the ones "fighting against censorship" when the entirety of their activity is hounding people into silence is completely beyond me.

It still amazes me (though it really shouldn't) that people like that can so completely flip out over the presence of people unlike themselves in a game, and still not approach the idea that maybe people who don't ever see people like themselves in games might have a legitimate complaint.

Aside from the inherent irony of celebrating this as a victory for ethics in journalism, it's also kind of hilarious because attending E3 press conferences in person is, like, no longer actually important.

I suspect we wouldn't be having this conversation if the Witcher 3 weren't indicative of much wider problems with the industry. So while yes there may be a bit of truth about it being a cultural work or being singled out among other games with similar problems, when you get down to it, it represents the problems of an industry dominated by white men (well, at least the North American and European portions of the industry, obviously Japanese games are a different story). And it's not just representation in games, but among developers (which is arguably the root of the problem, but also these things probably feed into and reinforce each other). One of the problems with using specific games to point out wider problems is that you always get pushback about factors which might be specific to that game, or claims that creators should have the right to choose what characters they portray. Those are both true, but it basically gets used to try to shut down any discussion about the problems facing the industry as a whole. This is the same issue I have with many criticisms of Anita Sarkeesian's videos. People think that by debunking individual cases they can debunk the entirety of her claims. The problem is that individual cases on their own may be justified or not problematic, it's in the context of an industry where nearly every big game has similar issues that they really are a problem.

I'm not sure why I should give any weight to what the guy's friends (who I know nothing about) might say about his actions. The very fact that they seemed to think it was cool for him to proceed with this makes me discount their opinions pretty heavily. I also think it's pretty hilarious that you are honing in on the bias of selecting quotes to reinforce a story (which is not actually itself an ethical problem, btw), considering the entire Zoe Post was Gjoni doing the same thing about their entire relationship.

So many of the details in that article are horrible, but I think the thing that gets me the most is his friend claiming that 8 months of inciting a mob to terrorize Zoe and others was "worth it" because Gjoni has a girlfriend now. What a complete asshole.