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Roderick

Feminism

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It doesn't help that it's the culture of misogyny mixing with the assumption that video games journalism is corrupt.  Looking back, I'm completely unsurprising it blew up as it did. If there were any two topics that get people spitting bile, it would be those two.  

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For the record, I don't believe the ethics angle either.  It strikes me as a smoke screen to cover up attacks on a woman for the apparently heinous crime of being a woman.  I am bothered to the extreme when people purposely do horrible things under the guise of good intentions.  But as I said earlier the discussion doesn't really go anywhere if all we do is agree with each other.  So I'll play the bad guy and ask the shitty question.

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It doesn't help that it's the culture of misogyny mixing with the assumption that video games journalism is corrupt. 

 

Exactly! Based on a rumor confirming a previous assumption, these people are harassing a person incessantly. 

 

 

If you're interested in discussing this, might I suggest starting a separate thread about game journalism ethics? It's an interesting topic, especially regards to f.ex. youtubers taking cuts of profits and so on, but discussing this in context of Quinns having her life gradually invaded feels like ignoring the more serious issue at hand, especially in a thread about feminism.

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this is a new low in a series of endless lows. i really think one step is accountability, and reddit/4chan's culture of total anonymity is a problem.

 

the other step is cultivating communities that won't stand for, and grow them. i know that can't stop the outward facing things like twitter. 

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Quick update: thankfully at least a couple of people (including another female games journo) posted on that (ex, I now realise) journo's post, taking her to task. Her response:

 

 I understand what she's going through and it sucks. Do I think it's right? No. Did I say it's right? No. Am I making assumptions on my private Facebook as someone who doesn't work in the industry anymore? Yes.

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Quick update: thankfully at least a couple of people (including another female games journo) posted on that (ex, I now realise) journo's post, taking her to task. Her response:

 

You can sort of tell how cornered somebody is based on how many questions they start asking themselves to make points.

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I wish internet dweller would channel all this energy of exposing conflict-of-interest on other mediums, rather than inconsequential shit. This isn't even about a video game, it's about review scores. Which I thought were widely denounced by the internet in the first place. All of a sudden they matter?

 

If these people were to investigate the private lives of any video game developer or publisher, I think their heads would spin. Nobody in this world is a saint, be it malicious, mistakes, or misunderstandings. But most of what makes that true is between those directly involved and nobody else's goddamn business.

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Also promoting your game in the wake of a famous actor dying, regardless of it being now free or not, is pretty shitty. Nice moral compass.

Fuck... I follow Zoe on twitter, I remember her agonizing over that decision, when it turned out DQ's steam authorization was going to go through on the day Robin Williams died, wondering if it would seem like exploitation, wondering if maybe it would be a good time to build awareness of depression, and finally saying fuck it and going through with it. The fact that people are getting this angry about supposedly underhanded tactics used to promote a free game about understanding the effects of depression... How does this even make sense as something to get this angry about? What fucking runs through these people's veins?

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I wish internet dweller would channel all this energy of exposing conflict-of-interest on other mediums, rather than inconsequential shit. This isn't even about a video game, it's about review scores. Which I thought were widely denounced by the internet in the first place. All of a sudden they matter?

One problem with this is that you're conflating one loud-as-fuck vocal group with another loud-as-fuck vocal group. If the way gaming sites present themselves is anything to go by, the majority actually prefers to have review scores. Just because some people scream about it doesn't mean everyone on the internet feels that way. And the people screaming against review scores and the people screaming against alleged review score corruption are not necessarily part of the same group.

 

The other problem is that these people yelling at Zoe probably don't give a fuck one way or the other about reviews scores - they just want another excuse to spit vitriol at someone, and this time they have "justification" to do so.

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The easiest way to figure out people's agenda on this is to ask them for their thoughts and info on the money that exchanges hands for review scores (or other benefits). Because that shit is not new and goes on quite a bit. I can't remember the site, it's based out of the UK, but it was quite infamous a couple years ago for some conflict-of-interest, specifically starting with a Hitman game.

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I think I'm going to withdraw from this topic for awhile. After reading more about this Quinn debacle, I just feel gross about every single person involved including myself for reading about it. Woof.

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I've pretty deliberately avoided reading about it beyond her tweets (because I follow her!) and this thread, because that's her fucking private business and I don't want to and shouldn't be a part of it. But I fully support her as an individual because I know that, no matter what has happened, whether the accusations are true or not (on general reflex, I believe they're probably NOT true), she doesn't deserve what she's getting.

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Actually I think the point is that this specific case is a manifestation of bias against a certain people or type of media. Like Bjorn said, if this were actually a bigger question about ethics, the conversation would transcend constantly attacking Zoe Quinn specifically. The accusations of unethical behavior in journalism are there as an excuse to rant about the direction of the games industry or perceived nepotism or to push theories about a feminist cabal. Considering how fast this topic spread, it isn't this isolated case of potential conflict of interest that pushed the death threats and harassment, it was more likely an undercurrent of hate that ran for a while, except this time people are justifying it with an ethics argument.

 

Absolutely. The fact that there was nowhere near this sort of blowup about the ACTUAL quid pro quo arrangements that many youtubers engage in speaks volumes. Add to that all the crazy promotional stuff large publishers do for journalists, sending them shit, having them out to the desert to shoot guns for no fucking reason, etc., and THIS is what the supposed paragons of ethics choose to blow up over? Over a text adventure that got significantly less attention than your CODs and Battlefields, than even several other indie games?

 

It's pretty obvious it's people who already hated Quinn and are using the incident to pile more hate on. So much more. It's despicable.

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Absolutely. The fact that there was nowhere near this sort of blowup about the ACTUAL quid pro quo arrangements that many youtubers engage in speaks volumes. Add to that all the crazy promotional stuff large publishers do for journalists, sending them shit, having them out to the desert to shoot guns for no fucking reason, etc., and THIS is what the supposed paragons of ethics choose to blow up over? Over a text adventure that got significantly less attention than your CODs and Battlefields, than even several other indie games?

 

It's pretty obvious it's people who already hated Quinn and are using the incident to pile more hate on. So much more. It's despicable.

 

If it were a question solely about journalistic integrity, then I don't even see why Quinn would be discussed at all outside of a cursory mention. It's up to the journalist to recuse themselves properly and what not.

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Also seeing TotalBiscuit's rant was a little weird because he seems to judge Depression Quest as an objectively bad game, as if when compared to the Elemental Laws of Game Design it fails a test. You can sort of see that because before that he also says that it spreads an important message and does it well and that it touched him personally, but then went on to say that it's just a bad game. On top of the sexist undercurrents of the accusation, the accusation itself is made on the idea that games can be good or bad based on this abstract, absolute idea of what games should be, and that anything that isn't that is bad and shouldn't deserve any recognition (that Depression Quest is one of these games). The argument runs completely opposite of the idea of what art is. It's a dumb way of seeing things, and it's being used to smokescreen a more fundamental issue.

 

It's fucked up that this layer, the sexist layer, the adolescent vindictiveness layer, and the weird amorality of these sort of arguments manifest themselves in a bad lasagna that is "gamers". It's hard not to generalize about these people (call them manchildren, nerds, etc) but jesus christ how can so many people be so wrong on so many levels

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TotalBiscuit is a big ol' turdman and has been forever.

 

This thing has been bumming me out all day. I really feel for Zoe, and love the work she's done to combat the stigma against mental illnesses.

 

Most of it is bullshit concern trolling to mask straight up misogyny. Talking about the bullshit "points" brought up by people threatening her on twitter only legitimizes them and minimizes the fact that people are legit harassing her. Like these people give a fuck about ethics. They just want to control women. Disgusting.

 

Can anyone post some rad feminist shit to counteract this miserable fucking week? I got some neato body-positive stickers in the mail yesterday and could use suggestions as to what I should stick them on.

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Yeah, that one's pretty good.

 

Also I have difficulty believing that you could find 5 games journalists who'd still go ahead with writing a review after they'd slept with the developer, given how casually game journalists seem to accept that they can't review their friends' games.

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Yeah, that one's pretty good.

 

That's brilliant.  What was the fallout of the investigation?  I went searching, but the first few pages of Google results were all linked to that speech, or to the misogyny speech that PM Gillard gave. 

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Trial's still ongoing, I think, but there have been more allegations that have come to light. The army chief has said that he expects that, as he is demanding a cultural shift, that there's a long way to go and there'll likely be more incidents coming to light as that happens. I recall there were a couple of officer cadets charged this week, so it sounds like women might be more willing to make reports, and the brass more willing to take them seriously. The academy has a woman running it now, and it looks like all three defence forces are hitting their gender makeup targets for women.

 

I find Lt Gen Morrison's approach to feminism particularly amusing because it's not especially altruistic. He is a career soldier who became aware of a recurring problem in his army that affected his troops' morale and safety, and hampered their capacity to completely represent the country they serve. I love how incongruous his speeches are.

 

(The Australian Army has different fitness standards for women than for men, which is often controversial - it looks like the ADF believe, for now, that while there's a risk of having less effective soldiers, there's enough women committing to the defence forces and passing non-gender specific fitness standards that mitigating that risk is not worth the cultural problems that come from strong gender bias.)

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I've been out of the loop on this, but let me get this straight:

 

The whole indie dev sleeps with games journalists thing...Why is she being attacked for this? If the argument was even related to journalistic ethics, the journalists should be the ones who are getting attacked. 

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I've been out of the loop on this, but let me get this straight:

 

The whole indie dev sleeps with games journalists thing...Why is she being attacked for this? If the argument was even related to journalistic ethics, the journalists should be the ones who are getting attacked. 

 

Allegedly she's done a bit more than that. And the conversation (where it's allowed to happen) actually seems to have shifted to what you are proposing, quite decidedly so. I'm not 100% certain about the whole ordeal (then again, who is with this clusterfuck), but the escapist has a thread on its forum about it that hasn't been locked down, if you want to read up on it.

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I just glanced at the forum and the thread is almost impossible to follow. I think I'm happy to go back to being ignorant on this; the whole thing seems dumb. 

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